WAGONS HO!
The G0G0 Transporter was an internal FUSE science project seeking to solve 2 problems: 1. What’s the most ecologically friendly way to take advantage of Portland’s 20 minute neighborhood concept? And 2., what happens to the expensive strollers that children certainly grow out of ?
Answer number 1 is the wagon. With a wagon you can haul almost anything while on foot. That is :a 50 lb bag of dogfood, groceries, kids, even a large potted plant.
The question then became “is a wagon enough?” Would other people share this wagon love? So we thought more, and I had colleagues that were about to become parents and his or her colleagues would pitch in and buy them a really cool expensive stroller. This got me thinking about what happens to these strollers beyond being used for a younger sibling. No one wants a pooped-on, barfed-on second hand stroller or at least there did not seem to be a robust used stroller market. So, what if the stroller could be built more like a roof rack system where you could evolve the product to transform it into some-thing or things more useful once the child gets out of infancy?
This turned into the GoGo Transporter System whereby adding or subtracting components, you can make a variety of wheeled products.
GE’s Supra division came back to FUSE to get an industrial design for an update to their E-Key. This was a dedicated device beyond the realtors cell phone that would beam an infra red signal to open the iBox. Our industrial design was tied to the electronic internals provided by GE.
Slabtown In Stumptown
A very clever guy came to FUSE with an idea. A better way to set up a grid of rebar that floats within a slab of concrete. This wasn’t a totally new idea, but Kerry, the guy, had a host of improvements he wanted to add and he had a plan to make these really sell. These concrete chairs turn the painful time eating chore of setting up a grid of rebar into literally a snap. The rebar just pops into place at just the right height.Our job was to make them super strong and super cool. We made them feel like the super utilitarian future by instituting this octogonal theme throughout the structure. The octogonal base not only provided visual branding but also helped with keeping the rebar layouts in the field straight. FUSE designed all 27 variations that accomodate different sized bar and different heights. FUSE also redesigned the BIP logo along the way.
Sitting Is The New Smoking
This project was born within FUSE during the time when became widely recognized that standing was better than sitting. This period saw the advent of work surfaces that raised and lowered. These were expensive desks and the other thing is it’s hard to love a desk or at least want to spend big money on a desk. We know you can make a desk from an inexpensive door and sawhorses and most importantly you can put the desk up high to support standing. What is needed is a chair that can support this posture. Even better would be a chair that can go from traditional task height to stool height, maybe even allowing a worker to perch or lean against that chair. Easily done with locking a few casters!
Also, for the facilities managers who must purchase chairs for an organization the Crane chair supports all the work surface heights a facility may have.
We submitted this design to premiere office seating manufacturer Herman Miller (HM) and they picked up on it, flew our principal to HQ and launched a project to build a prototype. The project hit a snag when the HM design manager went on maternity leave but this led to our participation in multiple projects at HM.
With Great Control Comes Great Power.
HP came to FUSE to get help creating a control station for their almost battle shipped sized Page Wide Web Press , the T1100S. This super sized printing press uses arrays of HP’s patented Ink Jet technology and applies it to a web (paper substrate) that is up to 110″ wide by literally forever. This sort of printer creates the 4 color images one would see on a corrugated box. The print is laminated to corrugated or other substrates in a finishing operation.
Our job was to come up with a work station that would encompass an array of monitors that not only control the print job but also monitor multiple live views of the print/machine in progress and provide an expert system database if any adjustments or repairs are needed to the printer or the print.
The Pillar design includes a flip down keyboard tray if needed and is modular should an HP customer want more than 3 monitors. Of course, our design would need to compliment the T1100S and be built in materials and processes that reflect the relatively low production quantities.
We were told the operator of this printer would never be sitting so we created a Pillar of adjustable and replaceable touch screens. The Pillar design includes a spacer that can be added or omitted should the operator be short or tall in stature. To house the hardware that runs the control station, we created a cabinet with cleverly disguised filter vents to avoid the accumulation of the paper particles that live in this environment. This project premiered at the DRUPA show in Germany in 2016.
A Masters in Cartography
After the missing in action Crane Chair prototype, Herman Miller contacted FUSE to participate in a design competition to design a furniture line or system that fell somewhere between Office Depot and the more expensive Contract furniture. We were told it need to be flat packed and Ready To Assemble (RTA). After that, the requirements were up to us. FUSE said “yes” and was given 3o days to come up with something to present at HM headquarters. Our design focused on what we thought all start-ups, fast moving design firms needed. That is: what we needed. We knew we wanted wheels and adjustable work surface heights. We had built our own MDF work surfaced desks and knew how heavy they were. We used this super light structural material called PEPCORE for our work surfaces. We also noticed that all images of all furniture never showed the cords that ran the CPU’s, monitors and equipment that every knowledge worker used . We made our vertical structures into cable ways with multiple access point for cords to enter and exit.
Our design was one of the winners and went on to be prototyped by HM. Ultimately, we lost the PEPCORE work surface as the supplier could not make enough of it, cheap enough, but our design was being manufactured.
