Prototyping - Future Artifact

#Futureofworkandplay

This week for my future artifact project in relation to the future of menstrual products, I started sketching and prototyping ideas.

I first researched gender dysphoria to find out more personal views of what it's like to menstruate as a non-female identifying person. As I identify as female, I did not want to go into this project with no research and a biased, uneducated view. View the original article by Jen Bell here.

What it’s like to get your period when you’re trans - Jen Bell, Clue article

I then picked out a few things that were commonly mentioned.

I the came to the conclusion that I wanted to battle in my future artifact - Because menstruation is seen as a "women's" issue and a woman's issue alone, it is stigmatized for a man or nonbinary person to menstruate.

I want to create a product that normalizes men and nonbinary people menstruating, and that it's not a hidden thing or something that should cause distress and gender dysphoria as it is normal for all kinds of people to menstruate.

Sketching

I started sketching ideas in regards to packaging, reusable boxes, cleaning product bottles, logos, and eventually landed on the idea of creating some sort of display storage 'slab'.

I ran with this sketch here, a kind of slab/box that could hold products and with a logo on top. From this I sketched more ideas.

I liked this idea of having a concrete slab engraved with the logo I had come up with which mixed together menstrual products as well as the letters T and G (for 'transgender' as that was my demographic - a subtle way to tie everything together), it shows that menstruation and gender is very much intertwined. The slab would have a piece of glass or acrylic on top of the concrete which would be where you display your products.

Before I started creating 3D models of my prototype, I created a physical model just to test out the relative size and height of the slab.

3D Modelling

I created some 3D modelled prototypes, which showed different options of storing the products. I ended up liking the last model the most as it only allowed products to be stored on the top of the display which would encourage a smaller amount of products and hopefully sustainable products.

After talking to the technicians in our design studio we figured out that the best way to make the mold for the concrete is via the CNC and using foam. This means that I could play around with filleting and chamfering the edges of the slab. After experimenting, I settled on this final design.

Assumptions

I created a list of potential materials, as well as assumptions which needed to be considered. I then added solutions to the assumptions and ranked them from potentially impossible to probably possible.