The project aims to investigate the ways in which non-designers engage in design in their everyday lives. Within the process of observation and inquiry, we will figure out the user/designer’s mental model they built, the tools they use, and the terminology they use to describe, methods, goals and values.
Team | Julia Rickles | Gengsu Tu
Subject | Judith Sylvester, Conservator
Date and Time | Feb.7 2014 14:10-15:20
Location | Storage, the Mathers Museum of World Culture
Our subject Judy works as a conservator at the Mathers Museum. She designs and creates storage mounts for ethnographic artifacts, and with very little money in budget, she has to scrounge a lot and find alternative uses for day-to-day things. The “Hanging Roll” is one of her designs. Grounded on the contextual inquiry, we then analyze user profile and affinity diagram, from which we develop more concept of everyday design.
PROBLEM
The museum collects and stores many types of textiles, of varying ages from varying locations. Judy designed the “Hanging Roll” about seven years ago for the storage of irregular textiles that are “in between an article of clothing and a flat textile”. She found when a textile is of an irregular form, traditional storage methods do not suit (i.e. folded into boxes, hung on padded hangers, rolled up flat textile).
EVOLUTION & INSPIRATION
The first evolution was simply a regular hanger with a padded roll, but there was not a lot of space between the top of the hanger and the roll. Our subject got the idea for the “Hanging Roll” from The Reuse Store. She saw a hanger with a long wire neck on a flat wooden rod. The way it finally evolved was she when she found, again at the reuse center, a whole bunch of metal rods. She realized they could make custom hooks from the metal rods (around a template) and then use picture wire to give a good amount of space for bulky textiles to hang.
MATERIAL REASONING
Not only will the “Hanging Roll” properly support the object, the materials she has fabricated the roll out of all serve a purpose. She explains that the materials she has used to cover the “Hanging Roll” are archival substances. These archival substances, she explains, are borrowed “traditionally from agriculture and manufacturing”. She notes that the field of conservation does produces some very pure, specialty substances for museums, but this becomes very expensive.
