Auris - modern mp3 player

Hello everybody,
Since this is going to be my first post, I’m first going to introduce myself. My name is Robrecht Vanhauwere and I’m a 16 year-old highschool student from Belgium. I really love all sorts of design (graphic design, product design, architecture, industrial design, …) and I’m going to study Industrial Product Design when I’m graduated from high school.

This is a contest entry I made and would love to hear what you think about it and what I can improve, because I love to always learn new things and improving myself.

Friendly greetings,
Robrecht Vanhauwere


(edit: since my pictures are too big, you can see them also here: Behance)

Did you explore any other directions or lock in on this design right away?

What are the materials, construction methods? There is no evidence of any part lines for manufacturing and assembly.

It’s actually not a contest where the winner his design gets made, so its more about the concept and form

Hi Robrecht welcome to the boards. Yo above happens to design consumer electronics for a living, so might not want to brush off his questions as meaningless. If you haven’t thought of manufacturing, you probably should be. I understand you’re not in university yet, but the world is out there for your discovery…

I don’t know what competition this is for or what it requires, but showing that you have some thoughts about how the device would be put together or what it would be made of is always good.

You have set a context the product will be used in (workout/intense activity) and probably have some thoughts on why this concept is good in this context (why the chosen type of interaction, requirements that follow from the context and that might affect materials and construction, how do you wear it etc). I would make these thoughts more clear in the final presentation. The idea of having the device separates into to two is interesting (the option to bring less along for the workout or leave the fragile screen somewhere safe when needed makes sense).

With the sketches I would also have liked to see more exploring to understand more of your thinking that led you to the final product.

And as nurb pointed out: take the constructive input and improve on what you have. Some of the best teachers I have had rarely gave much positive feedback, but what at first might have seemed harsh I learned was usually well thought-out constructive feedback that helped me improve.

I didn’t ment to be rude in that reply, but I’ll keep that in mind for the future.
Thanks for responding, I’ll try to follow your advice up and work further on it :slight_smile:

Robrecht, I actually didn’t read your post (I’m a designer, we skip to the pictures :wink: ) but going back and reading you are only 16, this is a very nice project. One of the things we often do as designers is explore a range of ideas and share that initial exploration for feedback. The ideas get better and stronger… faster…

Regarding the form, the charger jumps straight out as being slightly off. I think I understand what you are trying to go for but your sketches were a lot softer and looked more right. Try dropping down the edges a few millimetres and apply the same radius to that as you have done to the main body. I can see what you were going for but consider what it will look like with only a single part plugged into it.

I wouldn’t get too bogged down in detail but a little detail in the right places (split lines, material selection, finishing and some consideration for assembly) would make your proposal look a lot more complete.

I like that you have kept it really simple, but I think you could work on the shapes still. Looks abit out dated to me.