Sensory Project

University Second Year Project
January 2015 - May 2015

After working with Eco Glo we started a new brief within the Sensory Project, Ed Hall stayed on as a consultant. The brief was a open brief to choose a scenario and a market to design for, once a design idea had been settled on then to expand it into a range to address need of other consumer groups. 

My initial idea was to design for a scenario I knew well the student kitchen, an area which storage space can be a problem and certain items can be more problematic than others, I designed a collapsible pan but was not sure how to expand this into the range needed and there were possible problems concerning the materials involved.

My next idea was children's menus and entertainment at restaurants. I found that the children menu "packs" had barely changed since I was young enough to use them, and with children growing up in a very digital era it would make sense to upgrade this to a digital format. This digital format was backed up by research I conducted with parents, with most children having access to and most reverting back to using it when bored at restaurants. 

My base design to which to expand a range off of was a tablet designed for Frankie & Benny's. I had been kindly given one of their activity books to help me do my research into the activities they include. This tablet was round and had a grove built into the surface so it would double as a place mat so not to get in the way when the food comes. 

The expanded range I developed was based on research into different types of restaurants, so the three other different markets were chosen from here. A more up market restaurant which I chose Prezzo where I design a tablet and a touch screen table to suit their more adult market. A heavily themed restaurant for which I picked Rainforest Cafe where I designed a tablet to be used up to the arrival of the meal with a design to fit their overall theme. Finally a casual dining restaurant which I picked Nando's and design a tablet similar to the Frankie and Benny's one but also another square one that allowed food to be ordered and paid for from the table.