Organizer
Corralling Reading Materials
Reading is performance in the way we hold books, e-readers, phones and tablets. Reading is also the performance in picking up and putting down the paraphernalia associated with reading. Often all of these objects end up in a pile and become the site for another performance of mindlessly going through piles of reading material searching for a lost pen, misplaced book or buried phone. The design of this organizer takes off from the shape of an open book, the implied invitation to browse of a bookstore shelf and the intimacy of the space a book occupies when it held or open in one’s hands.
The design is made up of several interlocking pieces that can be assembled without tools. There are a number of colorful variations to suit personal style:
“A book is a dream you hold in your hands.”
— Neil Gaiman
Performance: Storyboards
Books are special objects. Not only are they a gateway for the imagination, but we interact with them in surprisingly intimate ways — including falling asleep with them late at night. These interactions became the focus of thinking about the performance to embed in the physical design of the organizer.
I took these storyboards and combined them with the problem I wanted to solve for. This problem was the pile of books and papers by the side of the bed. Too often I lose my phone, pen or reading glasses in this mess.
Performance: Sequence with Prototype
Mechanical Drawing
Reflection and Next Steps
This was an interesting project and a good way to break out of making things “for” people or “for” a problem and instead to think in terms of designing from the way people respond and react to the objects in their environment. Books and reading and the stuff that accompanies them was rich material to mine for this organizer.
Next steps include continuing to work with the size of the pegs and the holes. The initial prototype from the VFL took too much material and I had to shim the holes so the pegs would not shimmy loose. The next round will be to redraw those pieces with an eye to adding a bit of thickness to account for the laser cutter both subtracting material from the peg and from the hole. Further exploration is needed to see what other configurations can be built from these “adult” legos.
