As the Design Engineer Intern at Smart Design from June 2017 - September 2017, my primary responsibility was working on projects within the OXO account. It was an invaluable experience where I touched over nine separate OXO projects (on top of other non-OXO projects at Smart) ranging from a complete grate and slice kit to a single lay flat pot strainer, insulated bag to baby bottle brush, Y-peeler suite to sink strainer. I was involved in all stages of the product development cycle conducting interviews for user testing, rapidly iterating on mechanical design, producing high fidelity prototypes, validating design direction, creating tooling ready CAD using an agile surfacing method in Creo, and even industrial design exploration.
User-centered design is OXO and Smart's bread and butter. With a background in user research from my Integrated Product Design program at Penn, I jumped in to help out with this area of the product development cycle conducting interviews to make sure the products were intuitive and easy to use for a variety of users. These pictures were taken from one session during the development of a shower caddy.
Conducting validation testing of different product designs sometimes required high fidelity prototypes in order to simulate the end user experience as closely as possible. These pictures were taken during the squish molding process of the silicone pot strainer. The molds were designed in CAD, 3D-printed in ABS, sanded and prepped and then the silicone was squished over the metal clips and strainer insert.
Other times, a more quick and dirty approach was necessary, like Dremelling out different drainage patterns on a bottle brush basin, slicing a silicone molded part to weaken the strength of a hinge before thinning it in CAD, or creating fast paper models to get size and geometries of strainers that fit within shallow pans and deep pots. In certain situations I found that you can learn a lot more with five minutes in a shop than staring at a CAD model and wondering "What if?" for thirty minutes.
A majority of my time working on the OXO account was spent working in Creo. Smart engineers spend a lot of time in this software and have developed an agile surface modeling technique that allows for lighter weight models that are easily scaled, stretched, and generally modified in order to accommodate multiple rapid design iterations without the need to scrap the old CAD and start anew. These are Keyshot renders of the Complete Grate and Slice assembly, a project on which I served as engineering lead and created all part files and assembly files.
Update: the Complete Grate and Slice launched Q2 of 2018 and can be purchased here!
I even got the opportunity to explore the industrial design of a new mini Y-peeler suite. I participated in initial ideations and brainstorms where we would produce as many 2D sketches around certain design considerations in 10 minute bursts. We then took our favorite design directions from those sessions and made 3D sketch models out of foam. These were models that I made to explore the handle form and study the resultant ergonomics.
Update: these peelers are now available for sale here!