Assessing the Effectiveness of Design Heuristics for Furniture Design and Tool for Model-Making: Two Case Studies in Design Thesis Projects

Abstract

This research discusses the validation of the Design Heuristics for Furniture Design (DHfFD), a concept generation tool for novice furniture designers and Tool for Model Making (TfMM), an appearance model-making tool for furniture designers with special emphasis on the chair. The tools have been developed from an analysis of the characteristics of 650 award-winning furniture (chair) designs and published compendiums of well-known, successful designs. Available Design Heuristics are Industrial and Product Design specific. Hence, DHfFD and TfMM have been developed exclusively with the intention of supporting novice designers to generate concepts and make models in Furniture Design. To understand the effectiveness of the DHfFD and TfMM in combination, they were introduced to the two postgraduate design students for applying to design thesis projects at the Department of Design, IIT Guwahati, India. This research illustrates and discusses the effectiveness of the application of a combination of DHfFD and TfMM through two case studies along with the recommendation for using these tools in furniture design projects.

Presenters

Supradip Das
Assistant Professor, Design, Indian institute of Technology Guwahati, Assam, India

Amarendra Kumar Das
Department of Design, Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Design Education

KEYWORDS

DESIGN HEURISTICS FOR FURNITURE DESIGN, TOOL FOR MODEL MAKING