Daisy — Joseph Kim

Designed as if Manufactured

We wanted to push the boundaries for our capstone project by designing and making a fully functioning product.

Making way for hardware

Every OEM hardware was measured carefully to be integrated into the design seamlessly. The hardware parts are panel-mounted inside to prevent unwanted movement and provide structural rigidity.

Frame-based Construction

How can we minimize the number of parts necessary while keeping the assembly/disassembly simple? Two frames were integrated into the design to provide the Y-height while holding together the top and bottom modules.

Driven by the Material and Finish

The "dimples" were accidentally discovered during one of my past projects. Inspired by its unique, constellation-like look, the material and finish have been integrated into the design to complement the speaker perforations.

Panel-mounted Aluminum

The fine-glass-bead blasted, then CNC-machined aluminum has non-staggered perforations and will be panel-mounted after the assembly.

Meet Daisy

Daisy introduces a new way of listening and engaging with music. Through interactions that evoke analog nostalgia in music, various “flavors” can be applied over streamed music to our preference and taste.

Project Approach

Everyone enjoys listening to music. But our goal was to understand why we enjoy the act of listening and to identify if there are any areas that we could build on.

3. Ultimately, these conversational qualities of music become a way to validate and build upon your emotions, helping you feel what you want.

4. So, we saw an opportunity to amplify the conversational quality of music by reintroducing analog nostalgia in the music. And “altering” sound is just one of the many methods of achieving this.

2. We saw a dependent relationship between the user + music + emotion + activity. For example, we have our go-to songs for different activities that evoke a certain energy. (songs for working out, relaxing, reflecting)

1. We began by taking a look at how people engage with music today to discover opportunity areas or aspects we wanted to amplify in our design.

The Lo-fi Girl Phenomena

There are communities online dedicated to creating and altering music. And many of these artists create titles and effects that bring you back to a specific time, place, and feeling.

Lo-fi Girl, a famous live Youtube stream, is another great example of how these conversational qualities of music can be amplified to a larger audience to spread a shared emotion.

Early Explorations

With our core intent finalized, we brainstormed different form/interactions that could embody the experience we were aiming for.

Narrowing down Design & Interaction

Narrowing down on a set of features and interactions to begin exploring and refining the form

CAD iteration

Quick CAD iteration to get a feel of the device as well as seeing the handle designs

Proportions

Using the McMaster hardware measurements, I explored the relationship between the length of the handle and the body.

Perforation density

Perforation density greatly affects the overall look and feel of the product. Here, you can see the variance in the density and hole size.

Knob Design

From vector drawings to CAD to physical clay modeling, we explored different shapes and sizes for the main knob.

Mechanism Prototypes

Multiple prototypes were necessary to understand and refine the volume and intensity mechanism–starting from a sketch to foam-core to 3D printing.

Knob Feel

Iterating surfaces to identify the right knob feel.

Device UI

Device UI to match with the potentiometer’s radial detent every 45° degrees.

Functional Prototype

Fully functional Grey-model. Fully functional, look-like device is coming soon!

Aluminum Fabrication

As you can see to the right, the dimples created by the ball-nose bit creates these water droplet-like patterns that draws you in.

Refinement – Spot Putty

PLA printers are great for prototyping, and making sure your design intent is carried forward to its physical form. However, the one downside of PLA is its print/layer lines.

For the exposed printed parts, I am using spot putty to remove the print lines and achieve a smooth surface.