Feedback on robot vacuum project

Hi,

Just would like to hear thoughts about our student project, we were given a Company, Milwaukee, and we tried to do a design of a robot vacuum cleaner if they had produced one. Another question related to this is, are people working in clay nowadays or making models like this in Industrial design?

Project: Behance

Hope you have some comments on the design and the question, thank you!

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Why would the language for power tools be appropriate for a robotic vacuum?

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Good question! I don’t have a good answer for that, if it is appropriate or not, besides that we were assigned the Company by tutors. Todays cleaner looks very plastic, boring and breakable. So we tried to go in the opposite direction with Milwaukees language, to express a more powerful look and “cool”. We were given different companies, and the lesson were mainly to learn how to study companies language and express it in a robot vacuum cleaner.

So it was more of a VBL project… which is of value especially when you as a designer are provided vbl guidelines and must adhere to them. I have seen many designer who ignore them and spend days generating “styled concepts” that are never even looked at because they do not fit within the VBL.

As long as you are taught that this type of project is a micro aspect of ID work. Now creating a VBL is different…

Great process, glad to see you guys had to do a final physical model, well done.

Now to the design. My assumption is that your mentors wanted you guys to be able to translate the visual language of a brand to product not related or done by that brand. It’s a legitimate learning project and I wish more students would do something like it.

Your presentation lacks ideation, how did you arrive at that final aesthetic? You start with a couple of sketches and then proceed to show the clay model. To be honest, if you didn’t have the huge Milwaukee logo I would have a hard time knowing it was Milwaukee. I think your forms need additional development and detailing. I feel like you need additional part lines and textures or at least another material change…overmolds, die cast metal…?

It seems like you tried to compromise or tone down the visual language because it was a “home” robotic vacuum. If it was my project I would design it as a “shop” or industrial space robotic vacuum so that you could stay true to the visual language and details.

About clay models. I’m sure some companies/studios do them but I would say most designers have moved on to RP parts from 3D models. Especially for a project like yours. If it was a smaller project, wearable or very organic then clay may make more sense in order to fine tune the shapes and proportions.

I still would have liked to see your ideation sketches and your refinement 2D illustrations (Illustrator/photoshop) and/or your refinement 3D CAD models. The way this project is presented showcases your model making skills…not much about design.

This probably would help you see how they applied their language to a non hand powered tool. 3 colors/material changes, exaggerated features & proportions, trapezoidal/tapered forms, etc.

Not saying it’s my cup of tea but it looks rugged and fits their brand language. I think if your vacuum had more exaggerated surface treatment & detailing it would look a bit better…more rugged.

Thanks for sharing facts! It’s very interesting to hear. Yes, it was a Visual brand language Project, they told us that most of us are going to come to a Company were we have to learn and understand how to design Products that goes in the line within the Company language, which was the main thing in this Project to learn.

Thanks and we are very happy that our Uni gives us this opportunity.

Yes, that was their assumptions to learn us and it was a tough challenge, harder than we expected. I am very glad that we had this opportunity as you say. They wanted us to be better prepared before we come to a Company and have to adapt to their design language.

Thanks for being honest, it’s something I really appreciate so I/we can work harder in coming Projects on this things. I am going to try to make a better presentation of the ideation, thanks for mentioning that. We did many sketches, smal claymodels and two big clay models too. I am going to look how we can present them in a better way, as you say! About the design, thanks for telling that out! We are aware of the details and all the partline they have. They dont have it on all their Products though, some are more clean in their design. We did tone it down for different reasons, mainly was it to be able to create a realistic model of it (in time), the whole Project was in 10 weeks, so the time was a big thing we had to consider and also that we didn’t know in advance how hard it was to make it cuz lack of experience. We did though like it when the design was tone downed from chamfers and too many details. Although, we might had a better line with their language if it was more details and so on.

I am going to work for a better presentation of it, thanks for the feedback!

Okay, interesting to know about the clay models, thanks!

Thanks for all the feedback, appreciate it!

It is interesting that you brought up this example! We looked a lot on this one, but we realized that all their Products that had a direction in “Power” or any changing movement, it was a different type of design. We did our first sketches similiar to this one, but got feedback from mentors that our vacuum cleaner looked like it didn’t want to move. Therefor, we changed our style to go for their Tools that had movement. They have edges, similiar to a thunder as their logo, not so much chamfers as their other products. The black colors almost captures the Tools from behind, and the red goes from the front and towards the back in a edgy style (like a thunder). If you look at our sketch (the only one we showed) you can see chamfers, more details and so on. I will see if we can change the presentation so you can see better our way of thinking.

Here you maybe see better what I mean, we Went more for the Power Tools design in the end, but at first we looked a lot more towards their non moving Products. I agree though about the details, more details had made the design language look more similiar to their Tools. We did change about the color, we saw that they had often the grey “steel” colour Close to where the Power are and hits the ground/Surface. We ton that down because the vacuum cleaner should not express that it is going to break anything in your home, or go against something, therefor didn’t we attached the colour around the vacuum cleaner. Hope you understand what I mean, thanks a lot for your insights!
milwaukee-cordless.jpg

I wonder where @JNiklasson and the other creates of this project are today? It was a really nice model!