Re: Product Design and Manufacturing
Design and fabrication of a game to reclaim conversations and connection
Project Snapshot
).jpg)
01
Team & Timeline
March - May 2021
-
Role: Product design, manufacturing, storytelling and marketing
-
Team: Academic work with Javier Agüera, María Risueño, and Yash Trivedi. Special thanks to Mieko Murao for her graphic design work!
02
Problem
How might we design and manufacture a gift that fosters connection and meaning?
Over eight weeks, we were challenged to take a product from concept through sales in teams of three to four. The goal was to manufacture giftable physical products to be sold at the end of the semester to celebrate graduation at the IDM annual sales gala. Teams were required to manufacture and fabricate at least 28 identical units.
This project took place in the Spring of 2021, as we were beginning to see some life after a long winter of being socially distanced and isolated in the COVID-19 pandemic. Our team decided to focus product development on how to reconnect with people after a year of being apart.
03
Overview
The manufacturing project enabled the practice of opportunity identification, design research, concept generation, and selection, design, engineering, manufacturing, costing, pricing, branding, marketing, and sales. Our first two weeks were devoted to market and design research. The next 3+ weeks were devoted to concept generation and design, and the final 2+ weeks to manufacturing and sales.
)%20(2).jpg)
)%20(1).png)
).png)
04
Outcome & Impact
The outcome of this challenge was .re, a limited edition experiential game produced with reclaimed wood from MIT circa 1970. With curated content, it transformed “game night” into a thought-provoking and exceptionally entertaining experience, creating an experiential opportunity to remember, recollect, and revisit some of our favorite moments and favorite things about each other.
.re is an experience designed to reclaim conversations. Each time you rebuild the game, you have the opportunity to redesign your experience, as each of the 54 maple blocks contains questions and challenges on each side, allowing a multitude of variations every time you play. Questions are designed to be exceptionally funny while reacquainting ourselves with one another post-pandemic, rediscovering what makes closest friends and family special, and reconnecting on a more intimate level.
We designed, manufactured, and sold 50 units of the game, awarding us the highest number of units produced and the highest in sales out of the entire IDM cohort. However, we were most proud of being awarded best pivot, after making a big product pivot a few weeks into the project, illustrating our ability to rethink and react swiftly to learnings in the design, research, and prototyping phase.
How We Got There
Process
Design Research
In the design research phase, we explored a range of product ideas through a number of brainstorming sessions where we each diverged to brainstorm individually before converging around a few of our favorite ideas. The idea that got the most buy-in from our team early on was an ice jacket for white wine and champagne made from terrazzo (recycled glass and concrete) to serve as a talking point at home gatherings and picnics. Through informal user interviews, we were able to establish the desirability of this product. However, after prototyping the jacket, we realized it was not a feasible product to produce due to the danger and toxicity of sanding down concrete indoors.
The Power of Pivoting
In light of this information, we went back to the drawing board. We had learned of a piece of reclaimed wood available at MIT, which we were excited about due to the high prices of lumber and the connection to the institute. We started brainstorming around what we could do with the wood and landed on reinventing the classic “Jenga” game.
The wood used in each game comes from a table, which was on the third floor of the Stratton Student Center in the 1970s, which informed our entire design process. The table spanned ten feet long and nearly six feet wide and was used as a gathering place for students and professors alike. Seating around 10-15 students or faculty at any given time, this table provided the setting for connection - whether it be a late-night meal, working together on p-sets, discovering the J particle, getting into heated debates, or even falling in love. This table was located in the student center until 2018 when it was removed and taken to the Hobby Shop to be sold and reused.
When thinking about what to design using this wood, the table in its original form was top of mind. We wanted to maintain the integrity of the table while enhancing the idea of shared moments and connections. We also wanted to maintain the table’s connection to MIT. In the 1970s, MIT was experiencing a new wave of educators with a number of notable women joining the staff, including graphic designers Muriel Cooper and Jacqueline Casey who have been touted as bringing design to MIT, strengthening MIT’s visual identity while also elevating design within the Institute’s intellectual life.
Cooper stood out at MIT as the only female tenured professor in her department. Men were perceived as tough in that era so she said, “I’ll be tougher,” showing them by putting her often bare feet on the desk and routinely challenging gender norms.
She was a humanist among scientists and embodied the idea that there was no right or wrong way to do anything in her design process. She demanded that her students question and challenge everything and explore the intersection of typography, graphic design, and hands-on production. She went on to become the first design director of the MIT Press and co-founded the MIT Media Lab, and we wanted to remember her legacy through the design and storytelling in our product.
We decided to look at what else was going on in the world in the 1970s and came across the well-known game Jenga, which was created around the same time as this table by Leslie Scott. Scott used children's wooden building blocks purchased from a sawmill in Takoradi, Ghana when creating the initial game. Taking this context into consideration, the idea of reimagining the standard Jenga game with reclaimed wood from MIT was born.
Top: Table in the Stratton Center, Bottom: MIT Stratton Student Center, Right: Table circa 1970s at MIT
Muriel Cooper
Jacqueline Casey
Creator of Jenga, Leslie Scott
.jpg)
Parts of our initial mood board which informed our design direction
Vector artwork by Mieko Murao
Branding, Storytelling
As designers, we looked to Casey and Cooper’s work for inspiration. They brought Swiss Style typography to MIT Press which is known for its cleanliness, readability, and objectivity and begins with a mathematical grid. These grids are considered to be the “most legible and harmonious means for structuring information” and we really wanted to lean into this in the branding. We developed a mood board of our desired look and feel and worked with designer Mieko Murao, on the artwork used in branding.
Casey and Cooper also challenged everything -redesigning and rethinking constantly - which inspired us to rethink the way this game is typically played in our design process and the type of content we included, bringing us to etching both sides of the pieces with meaningful content.
Prototyping and Design
Once we knew what we wanted to make, it became a question of how to design and manufacture it. Our final design came from prototyping and exploring several options for each part of the project from the blocks to the carrying case to the content.
Our teaching team thought we had lost our minds when we conveyed our desire to manufacture 50 games with a total of 2700 wooden blocks and encouraged us to work smarter not harder, identifying any parts of our product we could outsource to speed up the process (as we were allowed to outsource one part). In the end, we decided to hand-make the 2700 wooden blocks, etched them on both sides using a laser printer, encased them in 50 etched acrylic boxes which we also designed and manufactured. While a lot of work, these decisions were a result of a lot of prototyping which informed every part of our final design. Click the gallery below to explore these design decisions.
Manufacturing
To manufacture each game was a huge team effort. Each game had nearly four hours of labor, and collectively we worked over 200 hours over a span of a few weeks to fabricate and quality check all games.
We developed a manufacturing plan to outline all steps and how long each would take, working back from our sales gala date to ensure we could effectively produce all units. Play our video on left, which goes through every stage in the manufacturing process. I designed this video for our website and final cohort presentation, along with short video teasers each day which were posted on Instagram to promote the game and encourage pre-sales.
Pricing, Sales Projections, Financials
To set our pricing, we started with market research and realized there was a huge range in Jenga pricing depending on the game. We decided to target customers with an emotional link to MIT, targeting senior undergraduates and their families who were looking for gifts for them, visiting scholars, faculty departmental gifts, exchange students, friends, and family.
We used a segmented pricing approach to cater to multiple budgets, and two different sales outlets to cater to a wider audience: Wix online store and Instagram. We also worked with partners to get discounts and keep our COGS low, while crafting a highly targeted outreach strategy with promotional messages going out through as many MIT channels as possible. Posts and Instagram stories were shared regularly, and we were fortunate to have nearly half our games sold before the virtual sales gala.
While this manufacturing challenge was just that: a challenge, we had so much fun and each came away as better designers, teammates and friends.
