This project was part of the Human Factors and Design for Society Module.

Besides the general design process this project was focused on user centred design and ergonomic considerations. The overall goal was to understand humans and how they interact with a product. In addition, an understanding of data (collection and/or analysis) was an important learning outcome.

The Brief was to chose a product for redesign that humans interacted with to accomplish tasks. The focus of the redesign is thereby the individual but the human has to be considered throughout. 

In the case of my chosen product, a dog harness, was especially on the cognitive and understanding as well as the handling of a dog harness. 

As it was a requirement for this project that the changes of the redesign are informed by secondary and primary research, human factors (physical and cognitive) and user testing these elements were considered throughout the design process. Therefore the dog and human anthropometrics were researched and analysed as they would possibly relate to the design.

Besides this analysis of data the process also involved the analysis of an exemplary harness (on the left). The knowledge acquired through this study was then used to create three design proposals.

The next step involved the creation of paper prototypes.

The first versions were not to scale 2D models that could be placed on an illustration to test how easy it was to identify the parts and fit of the harness.

The next versions were 3D models that allowed people to show how they would hold, handle and put them on a dog.

All of the insights gathered through testing were then used to further influence the ideation and design process.

Finally, a 3D prototyping was created that used parts of an existing harness and was altered to fit in with the redesign based on research and testing. This model was then used to create a CAD model using SoildWorks.