Tread Shelving
DESIGN RESEARCH | LEAN BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Tread was developed to improve the experience of students living in confined dormitories through accessible storage.
OPPORTUNITY
Develop an intervention that improves the living conditions in crowded dormitory spaces that could be implemented as a sustainable business using lean manufacturing.
OUTCOME
Flat-packed shelves that utilise the unused negative space of dorm ladders and do not require tools for assembly.
THE PROBLEM SPACE
College students living in dorms are required to keep bulky bunk bed ladders in their rooms, even if they don’t have a bunked bed. The Tread shelving system is designed to turn the inconvenience of a dorm ladder, whether in use or not, into an unobtrusive storage furniture unit.
CONCEPT TESTING
Throughout my design process, malleable materials like cardboard were used to test form, while the CNC routed wood models were later fabricated for usability testing, as well as for final iterations. Upon the discovery of this this initial insight, I interviewed students to understand the exact location and current use of dorm ladders so that I might create the most accurate initial models.
PROTOTYPING
After a few rounds of initial prototyping, I used contextual inquiry techniques to understand how the intervention would be used in context. Based on this investigation, the final iteration was updated to allow the shelves to not only attach to the ladder, but to the edge of the bed as well.
