ID [PNW]

"Lo is a wearable device that focuses on hypertension, encourages blood-pressure awareness, and is targeted towards people in their early twenties."  written by Aidan Wiess WWU’s Austin Scott and Jo Bloomfield , seniors in the Industrial Design program, won the prestigious 2020 GRAY Awards' student category for “Lo,” a wearable device that focuses on hypertension, encourages blood-pressure awareness, and is targeted towards people in their early twenties. The GRAY Awards is an annual cross-disciplinary awards program that focuses on architecture, fashion, product design and more. Winners are given awards that are hand crafted by John Hogan, and are also honored at the awards ceremony, which of course was a virtual event this year. The official list of submission categories includes commercial and residential architecture, commercial and residential interior design, landscape, student design and more.    Scott said the pair worked on Lo for their winter project, junior ye...

Shift Divider Screen by Kelsey Leppek and Norman Rockwell 2020 Nobody expected a global virus quarantine, but here we are, trying to adapt our living spaces for homeschooling, class sessions, office meetings, and focused work in addition to everything else that we do at home. We quickly realized that our home spaces and furniture were not designed for these new functions. This spring, the industrial design students of Western Washington University worked on designing new furniture solutions for working at home. And they did it while working from home themselves. The Problems They first investigated the problems that we are experiencing during lock-down: Sharing small spaces. Multiple people sharing the kitchen table to do work. Lack of privacy. Lack of square footage. Bad acoustics for video calls and meetings. Echos, noise, distractions. Online video conferences are notorious for poor audio. Bad lighting for video calls and meetings. Most people look hor...

With the recent introduction of effective and accessible virtual reality systems this new tool can be used in the context of industrial design and augment the design process. Virtual reality (VR) can be a useful tool and has the potential to radically improve the work flow for designers. The thesis of this research is that VR can improve the efficiency of the industrial design process through early visualization and evaluation of design concepts. In the early stages of a design project, many CAD sketch models can be created more quickly than physical models. These CAD sketch models can then be viewed and evaluated using VR very effectively. A one on one critique and discussion between a manager or professor and the designer can happen while viewing the designs in VR and on a screen. This allows for a convergence onto a design direction, which can then be further refined as a physical model. At the end of the design process, VR is also more effective at communicating design ...