Task 3: Product Sketching

Task 5 - Video Reflection: Designing Dream Machines

An idea I strongly took from the men of Designing Dream Machines is that if it is not nature, it is design. This is very true in my eyes. Everything we see or touch that isn’t an organism has been at one point designed.

Things don't just happen spontaneously, as this video shows. Patience, time and dedication all combine to design a product that has the 'x' factor. Some things have a lack of character, so we as the designer we must turn everyday objects into modern machines, that have the 'x' factor of "wow, I want that" from the consumer.

another key point is that lots of aspects all contribute, however they all need to be even, for example the ergonomics and aesthetics of a product.

From the video, I want to definitely make looking at the personality of a product a necessity, giving life and a character into it. For former products, we want to extract the DNA of a product and bring it into the new.

The Goalscorer

When looking back in a time of my life that I remembered and treasured with fondness, I always think about my time playing soccer. In youth/junior games, it is a fun experience of team bonding, making friends and discovering an active lifestyle. Playing soccer is one of the best things I do, and many feel the same way – where it is an activity that they want to remember.

I have come up with The Goalscorer, a product that keeps track, and remembers all of a player’s soccer season, where at the end it creates a physical representation of this time. It is aimed at players from about 7 – 12 years old.

After doing research, I concluded that the average amount of soccer games played at this age is 16. This correlates well with the fact that a soccer ball is made of 32 hexagonal and pentagonal panels. I decided to make the shape of The Goalscorer a half-a-soccer-ball shape. This meant that the user can psychologically make up the rest of the ball, and also means the product can easily be placed on a table or hung on a wall. After multiple seasons, the soccer player can have one for each, and they can all stack next to each other.

The Goalscorer works where it originally comes as an ‘empty’ frame of a soccer ball. As players play a season, for each game they play, they put a panel onto the frame. For a win - gold, a draw – silver, and a loss – bronze. The placed panels then make up a finished looking soccer ball. These colours have been chosen as they are similar to trophy colours, so no matter if a soccer team has a bad season, it still looks like a trophy of the season at the end. If a player misses a game etc, the panel is left blank, representing they didn’t play. Overall at the end of the season, they have a product that is a visual representation of this, allowing them to easily treasure what they have achieved.

Furthermore, the individual panels can be engraved or written on, where the date, teams and score of a match can be placed, so that the memory is further enhanced. Teams could even sign a finished Goalscorer, so the individual player can remember them as well.

Treasuring time is very important, and The Goalscorer allows this to be achieved very easily, where the owner can look back at a season or time of there life at ease.