DM1315 Design Process 1

FIXPERTS PROJECT

Noel

Maisie JoshCameron

Me

For the groups Fixperts project worked alongside Royal Mail, as a member of our group had connections with them. As a group we travelled to West Brompton, to a newly outfitted Royal Mail distribution centre where our fixpartner, Richard Hoile, informed us of their problem; These new distribution centres are manned by one or two people, who spend the majority of the time out back, rather than sitting behind the main reception desk. This is an issue as it leaves monitors, PDA’s, keyboards and computer mice unguarded, meaning people could come and take them. The computer monitors are held down with a Kensington lock which Royal Mail are afraid will give the customers the impression that the do not trust them. Additionally, many of their customers become very short tempered when problems arise in the collection of their parcels, and have been known to verbally and occasionally physically assault the staff, meaning a protective screen would also be useful. Thus we were tasked with creating a product that both hides to Kensington lock from the customers, as well as providing additional protection to the staff. A problem we encountered with some initial concepts we had on the day was the fact that the staff would be unable to retrofit a product to the work surface without getting a contractor to fit it, thus we decided to make a device that doesn’t need to be screwed to the surface and requires no special skill to fit it. The fact our product wouldn’t be permanently fixed in place would offer the staff the ability to move it, and their desk equipment around the work surface, a feature that wouldn’t be possible with a fixed screen. The wires and cables coming from behind the monitor are very unsightly and contrast with the rest of the new, tidy distribution centre. Our product would have to therefore in keep with the sleek modern design of the room to hide all the wires, making the whole thing much neater. We also decided that as the rest of the room, and Royal Mail in general is attributed with the colours red and white, that we would make our product these colours too, so that it fitted well in the room. The final issue we faced was the fact that many of these distribution centres have different thicknesses of their desks vary, therefore we would have to design our product to be adjustable, as we wanted it to be able to clip under the desk.

On this page are the rough sketches I did for our prod-uct. As a group we decided to use the image above as the concept to make on rig day.

The first thing we had to do was cut the different lengths of wood to the required sizes and then we planned out how our product would go together before actually assembling it. Whilst measuring it we realised it needed to be slightly wider, to fit both the keyboard and the mouse with enough room to be used comfortably.

When it came to fastening the pieces together, we initially cut come of the off cuts into 45 degree sections and attempted to nail these into the corners, where the planks met. However we were able to find metal brackets which did the job a lot better.

We had to get a few pieces cut from the technicians as we were una-ble to use the workshop machinery ourselves. This posed as a prob-lem as it meant not only did we have to wait in line to get work done, but we also had to explain exactly what we wanted done, where-as it would have been much easier to have done it ourselves.

Once finished with our rig build, we placed it on a table to view it and as-sess whether the under table clipping system worked correctly, which it did, however it was not adjustable as we had previously planned on doing.

We then had a meeting with our fixpartner, Richard, to gain his views on our initial concept. Although ultimately happy with the system we had devised, we ended up coming to the conclusion that the product needed to be deeper, as well as being open at one side as to not restrict the staff. To the right is my sketch for the new design which I drew in a group meeting, this was ultimately the design that we as a group decided to go with.

Before making the final product, I designed a 3D rendering on Google SkethUp, which I felt better portrayed the design to others than any drawing would do, as it gave a complete 360 degree view. I then designed the illustrator file that we laser cut. The pieces we laser cut were the two white acrylic screens and the red under table clip. We then went to the metal workshop and gave our technical drawing to a technician to manufacture.

Once fully assembled we were able to set up our product on a table and ensure that it worked correctly, which it did. Unfortunately, due to a delay in the metalwork shop we were ultimately unsuccessful in bringing our final product back to our fixpartner for his final opinion, however we still intent to do this so that we can fully conclude the project.