Grad App WIP

The SurgiBubble™ is an ultra portable operation room. As a single-use disposable sterile medical device, it isolates the surgical site from the surrounding environment, protecting both patient (from contamination) and doctor (from patient body fluids).

The inflatable operating environment needs a frame to support it, to safeguard against the event of de-pressurization. I iterated upon the previous rigid plastic and steel frame designs, arriving at the final design of a single-part spring steel hoop that pops open for rapid set-up that can be done easily by one person.

The pop-up design shaves minutes off of the total set-up time, which can be critical in the emergency situations SurgiBubble is designed for. The SurgiBubble is designed to be used in disaster setting and in conflict settings, allowing medical teams to provide advanced care with minimal medical infrastructure or to treat wounded soldiers within the critical golden hour.

Nook is a micro-architectural project that re-imagines walls not as static, but as dynamic surfaces that allow you to carve out some space for yourself. The concept is a wall that you can wrap around yourself to re-configurable private space within public space.

Team: Annie Zhang, Evan Hosteler, Hamilton Forsythe

Final demonstration of Nook prototype.

[Annie: will replace this with a GIF]

GIF/Video shows the flat wall sensing a person sitting down, and gently curling up which changes the arrangement of space from open to sheltered.

Nook’s final design takes inspiration from the tightly integrated layers and systems within skin. Like skin, Nook has different functional layers. Instead of epidermis, glands, and connective tissues, Nook is compose of a cosmetic veneer, air bladders, and mechanical fasteners. Also like skin, Nook becomes a flexible, dynamic surface - alive in the sense that it senses nearby presence and responds to touch input.

Early sketches, CAD, mechanical and material explorations.

[RISD feedback to not include this many process photos and just pick 1 or 2 - I didn’t fully understand why]

As part of the Formlabs design team, I helped design the large-format 3d printing ecosystem. The ecosystem consists of 3 steps: print, wash (to remove excess resin), cure (to fully harden the resin to it’s final mechanical properties).

The challenge of the large format ecosystem is that larger prints can be heavy and unwieldy, exacerbating the typical challenges of SAL printing being a messy workflow with a high risk for dripping and smudging the toxic un-cured chemicals during the handling and transfer of the print at each step.

I worked with Formlabs to identify the form and architecture of their large-volume cure station. Here is a sample of concept sketches and prototypes that informed the final direction of the door opening style of the product.

The final form factor of the Formlabs Cure L incorporates several key features I researched and prototyped. The one-handed opening, touch screen, and glass turn table all prioritize (1) clean-ability of resin contamination and (2) accessibility to maneuver the printed part.

As the Product Design Engineering Lead on the iPad Pro (M4) ecosystem, I led the cross-functional design engineering efforts to create a delightful “it-just-works!” hardware experience.

Co-designing the iPad Pro, Magic Keyboard, Apple Pencil Pro, and Smart Folio together is a long study in thinking not only spatially, but also temporally and relationally. Not only “do these accessories fit together?”, but also “what design tradeoffs enable/disable forwards and backwards and cross-compatibility with other accessories?” What needs to be true of the designs to ensure that the Smart Folio doesn’t just work with the iPad, but that it also enhances the experience of using Apple Pencil Pro? What are the dyadic interactions between hero-product and accessory, but also between two accessories?

The end result is a portfolio of accessories that not only work together, but elevate the entire ecosystem experience as one that is greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Ollas are an indigenous method of irrigation. The pot is buried to the neck, and water poured in the pot “sweats” through the unglazed stoneware to slowly and efficiently moisten the soil in which it is buried. I changed the form of the traditional style to work in a modern context for container gardening - enabling more plants to be grown with less water waste from evaporative loss and runoff.

Demo of water wicking properties of stoneware that enable the irrigation function of the olla.