PenneToGo is a seal tight food container that helps student bikers carry their meals across campus.
This prototype was designed in ENGS 12, Dartmouth's Design Thinking course. Our team was given the prompt to “help students carry stuff better”. After 10 days, we gave a multi-media presentation and received feedback from our peers and our professor, Eugene Korsunskiy, who used to teach at the Stanford d.school.
1. Conducting 6 user interviews
2. Creating wooden prototype
3. Gathering user feedback
4. Crafting presentation film
Dartmouth students navigate multiple different environments and activities every day. They need to carry many things with them, but at times the current systems for carrying things can be bulky, awkward, and even unhealthy.
After observational research and interviews, my team noticed that food is an important yet often neglected part of student life. In a campus like Dartmouth, busy student bikers have an especially hard time. This video highlights how biking with pasta can go awry.
Sticky notes and sharpies in hand, we brainstormed possible solutions. The biggest hindrance was that food containers are almost always orientation sensitive. Unless students are a pro at biking with one hand, or don't mind pasta stains in their backpack, biking with food is simply unwieldy.
Then I thought, what if we made something like a horizontal Nalgene bottle? A Nalgene bottle is water proof. It is big enough to hold a decent meal but skinny enough to fit into the side of a backpack. It has a rather ergonomic grip.
My teammates and I discussed this idea to no avail. Finally, I grabbed some foam board and created a prototype, and all debates were settled. I learned from that experience the criticality of biasing toward action, a design thinking mindset that promotes action over discussion-based work.
Using Adobe Illustrator and a laser cutter, Michael and I created a wooden prototype to represent our final product idea: a seal tight food container made of microwavable, dishwasher friendly plastic that latches strongly onto a handlebar bike mount. We used this prototype to gather user feedback.
