Develop phase
In this phase I focus on coming up with many solutions and developing and then testing the most promising ones with prototypes. The aim of this is to quickly iterate and arrive at a good solution to my How might we statement with the least time and resource. The first stage of this section is to brainstorm and come up with as many ideas as possible without any judgement of the ideas just yet.
Brainstorm
Once I had all my ideas on paper, I chose three that I think are the most viable. I will then progress with these ideas developing them further until I have a final concept that I am satisfied with, and feel is a good solution to my How Might We statement.
Idea development
The next step for me is to take the three ideas that I have chosen and develop them further through sketching and prototypes. After these initial sketches I have chosen not to progress with the colour wheel paint storage Idea, this is because I don’t feel that I adequately satisfies my How Might We statement as it wouldn’t make the act of painting any faster.
Physical Prototypes
he first prototype that I made was a prototype of the flexible shutter mechanism for the paintbrush sealer, mechanically this was a success however when I showed it to people for feedback they highlighted several issues, the main issue was that the prototype required too much force to close. Another piece of feedback that I received was that the aperture of the prototype was unnecessarily large, this was actually very good feedback because as the aperture gets smaller it gets easier to close, this means that these two pieces of feedback can resolve each other. The other piece of feedback was that more space was required to grip the top, this is also an issue that can be solved in the final prototype. This concept will also need a way to be held closed.
The second prototype that I built was of the auto filtering water pot. This prototype consisted of a laser cut acrylic box that was sealed with hot glue and contained a submergible pump behind a piece of filter paper.
Ultimately this prototype was a failure as it was unable to filter the paint out of the water.
The final prototypes that I made were an exploration of the form of the paintbrush sealer these were a series of clay models of possible shapes that the sealer could be ranging from quite simple to very sculptural.
When showing them to people the longer one with the “tail” received a Quite negative reaction while the other three received similar responses to each other. Because of this I will be using the simpler rounded form this is because this simplicity can contribute to the low cost nature of the product which is one of the key goals of my How Might We statement.
Final concept
The concept that I have chosen for my final concept is the paintbrush sealer. This is because it best addresses the challenges laid out in my how might we statement "How Might We design a low-cost product that helps casual painters pick up and put down painting quickly to allow them to make the best use of their limited free time." This solution is low cost because it contains few parts and now high-cost materials and it helps speed up the process of packing up painting supplies because it allows you to avoid washing your brushes completely.