Multifunctional Furniture Design for Small Spaces
Two of the projects were finalists in the National Furniture Awards, and one of them received a Master's Program award at Domus Academy in Italy as a second prize.
The current increase in population and decrease in living spaces have led people to find alternatives to living spaces. The Tiny House Movement has been proposed as a solution “to reconnect the actual needs of the users of domestic space with the design of their homes” (Hutchinson, 2016). In this project, students are expected to research and analyze user needs and lifestyles in relation to living in small spaces, and design a piece of furniture that corresponds to at least two functions suitable for use in small spaces, such as tiny houses, trailers, and dormitory micro-apartments.
After conducting a thorough user research analysis, students are expected to define a problem and suggest a multifunctional furniture solution. The students will decide on the product category based on their research analysis, which identifies the user needs related to habits such as sleeping, living, working, dining, storing, and leisure activities.
The following criteria should be considered during the design process:
corresponding to at least two different functions,
form-function relationships,
user-friendly interface and assembly details
ergonomics, human factors
proper material use and endurance of products
Place attachment is a significant issue with its important psychological and physiological effects on people (Hagerty et al., 1996). As residents living in neighborhoods, people need social interaction and stronger bonds between the physical and social aspects of their places in daily lives (Talen et al., 2015). The students enrolled in this studio course are expected to choose a neighborhood to explore and analyze its social relations and motivations for belonging.
This project focuses on product design for public use to enhance the neighborhood identity and enable the dwellers to feel a sense of belonging. The students are expected to choose a neighborhood to analyze its identity with respect to its physical, natural, environmental, ecological, historical, cultural, social, and emotional characteristics; and accordingly design product(s) for public use which promote social interaction among the neighborhood residents and create a sense of belonging/place attachment.
Possible product categories are exemplified below:
Transportation (bike stations, scooters, items related to public transport, bus stops,
parking lot systems, etc.)
Waste management (trash cans, recycling bins for electrical products, textiles, glass,
etc.)
Social interaction and activities (Playgrounds, cultural activity areas, sports fields,
shopping places, etc.)
Sharing and collaboration system items
Pack 3x3: Personal care packaging design inspired by biomimicry
*This project was introduced in the magazine published by the Turkish Packaging Manufacturers Association.
One of the projects was awarded by the World Brand Design Society Student Design Awards in 2022.
Jonathan Ive tells us a story about packaging in the book titled Steve Jobs: “Steve and I spent a lot of time on the packaging […] I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.”
Packaging is said to have two major qualities which are namely structural and graphical. Typical packaging inherently fulfills primary functions, such as protection, transportation, carrying, display, information, and identification. Natural analogy, mostly known as biomimicry, can help design students discover the cause-and-effect relationships that exist in any natural entity. Analysis of how nature employs patterns, forms, structures, and behaviors is expected to serve as a major tool that initiates design ideas.
In this project, students are tasked with creating a comprehensive packaging family for personal care products.
Connected with Gamification
Gamification is associated with the process of improving services by providing affordances for “gameful experiences” that offer support to users (Huotari and Hamari, 2012). Game, in particular, is promising to utilize in the design process “as a tool, a mindset, and a structure” (Vaajakallio, 2012). As Matallaoui et al. (2017) suggested, gamification can be used to facilitate behavior change in users without relying on extrinsic motivations, such as monetary rewards or punishments.
Regarding this, we can see gamification examples in various fields, such as sustainability and environmentally conscious behavior (Gnauk et al., 2012), enterprise resource planning, production, and logistics (Herzig et al., 2012a, b), as well as in supporting innovation processes (Scheiner et al., 2012). (Matallaoui et al., 2017).
Informed by the gamification processes, this project requires students to design a product that enhances the home experience, transforming the premises of the game. In this sense, there is a need for:
clear goal definition, e.g., healthy living, sustainable living, eco-responsible living, reducing consumption, sharing
a comprehensive understanding of the user
meaningful transformation of game elements
consistent connectivity among family members/neighbors
The product is expected to be distinctive, with features derived from gamification premises, both physically and digitally. The product needs to be integrated with a power supply. A well-developed app design should accompany the project.
Design through Expressive Narratives and Generative Metaphors
Expressive narratives are defined as creative compositions where the author uses the artistic dimension of language: the author or ‘sender’ is foregrounded, as well as the form of the message (Reiss, 1970). In order to interpret expressive narratives, the reader or ‘receiver’ needs to re-create the form, which usually comes as a novel, short story, poetry, drama, or biography (Puchala, 2011). In design, expressive narratives and metaphors are commonly used as a means to stimulate designers’ creativity in the design process (Cila, 2014) because they help to facilitate unconventional thinking by building relationships between distinct domains (Snodgrass and Coyne, 1992). While narratives are defined as platforms where people make sense of their thoughts and actions (Mead 1967; MacIntyre 1981), metaphors are described as “understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” by carrying the original realm of meaning into new realms of usage.
Through interpretations of the metaphors and metonymies in expressive narratives, the students are required to generate new concepts for a particular “backstage” context and are expected to conduct unobtrusive research and choose a particular backstage setting belonging to a particular profession. Accordingly, you are required to construct your new context for that particular backstage both by spatially defining its qualities and measures and by embedding the concepts you created through the interpretations of the expressive narratives and metaphors.
Relying on the context, the students are expected to design three units belonging to the space to create a relaxation and/or preparation environment at backstage. The units can cover needs such as lighting, resting, storing, rehearsing, and the like, and they can be used by a single user or shared by multiple users. These units need to be conceptually, functionally, and visually fitting into the context you generated, and they need to have a strong coherency with each other in the same terms.
Design for Diversity
Diversity is defined as (i) the condition of having or being composed of differing elements, especially: the inclusion of different types of people; and (ii) an instance of being composed of differing elements or qualities (Merriam-Webster, 2019). In the context of design, diversity and social connectedness are both fundamental for a broader understanding of well-being, which is experienced subjectively and individually but is at the same time social and dependent on the man-made environment (Keinonen et al., 2013). Design for diversity offers a new way of creating inclusive experiences for people of different cultural backgrounds or/and everyday routines celebrating differences (Gold et al., 2018).
Regarding the context above, the students are expected to work with two different (potential) user groups to design a product family which is constituted of at least three products. This product family needs to propose a system that promotes collaborative activities related to one of the universal themes (Gold et al., 2018), such as food, nature, music, or sports; and it needs to be utilized to fulfill one of the following aims: (i) reduce social distance and build new social interactions between two user groups, or (ii) enhance the existing social interaction between two user groups. You are required to select the related user groups and conduct in-depth user research through cultural probes, ethnographic interviews (Spradley, 1979), as well as a participant or/and non-participant observations (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007).
