Design a foldable passive seating device for the event market

Abstract

The design process of this graduation project is inspired on the “Model of the Product Innovation Process” (Buijs and Valkenburg, 2005). The five-stage product innovation model consists of product use, strategy formulation, design brief formulation, product development and product launch. This project covers the first four stages of the innovation model. The fifth stage is the actual product launch, which has not taken place yet, but hopefully this will be the case after publication of this report. This report envelopes the expedition to what the next product of flux could be, should be and will be, including the embodiment design and presentation of the final product. Flux® is a young company with a small product line, a so-called single product company. The flux® chair is their core product, around which several closely related products have been launched. Their designs are available in the best interior and design stores worldwide. In order to compete in this market, flux’s core product alone will not suffice. To innovate their business, products and services, an analysis of their present business is performed. Flux is in need of a product that could benefit from their current retail network and is an opportunity in a new market. Lounge areas are an upcoming trend in the event business. In the retail stores a current garden trend is lounge furniture, instead of the common dinner table, with seats. Adding a foldable function to this trend of lounge furniture in makes it possible to store the furniture. The final design goal therefore will be a lounge product aiming for the event market. The product should be a foldable passive seating device. Market development, technological possibilities and product development concluded that a sofa for two people had the most potential. The primary function of the sofa is sitting in a relaxed and layback position, while talking to your neighbour lounger. The research investigated what the best proportions are for a passive seating device to supporting the human body in a relaxed posture, from a scientific and ergonomic point of view. Sitting creates a lot of back muscle and spinal pains. The best way to sit is to change your posture and with a reclined back. A reclining seat and back will shift weight to the occupant’s back. This is comfortable, because it is reducing weight on the seat area. In general, if the occupant is supposed to sit for a long time, weight needs to be taken off the seat area and thus lounge chairs intended for long periods of sitting are generally reclined. The ideal measurements of the passive seating device are approached by literature research of scientific papers. The angle of the back and the angle of the seat together define the sitting angle. The sitting angle of the product will be 135 degrees. The seat will recline with 10 degrees and the backrest will be 45 degrees with reference to the horizontal plane. The seat depth is 47 cm, the seat height is 38 cm, the backrest is 65 cm, and the width of the sofa is 120 cm. The final design of the foldable sofa is a combination of functionality and form. It uses affective storage space, which also makes it feasible for distribution. It can be optimally produced with CNC milling, which is the current technique flux uses for their newest products. It is user friendly to fold and unfold and matches with the current portfolio and form language of flux. The consumer price will be about 8 times the production costs. The production costs are estimated on €60,- The consumer price will be about €480,-.