Material

ECOCRADLE

After doing reseach and initail ideas into adding and adjusting the grippable area on a laptop, i have come to the conclusion of changing the whole body material of a laptop into an unusual material which is not expected to be used in the manufacture of a laptop. This material being eco-cradle which ia currently used as a packaging material and is taking over polystyrene as the new form of packaging.

 

How It Works

How It’s
Made Grown

We actually grow EcoCradle using mycelium, a fungal network of threadlike cells. This mycelium grows around agricultural by-products like buckwheat husks, oat hulls, or cotton burrs to any shape we make. In 5 – 7 days, in the dark, with no watering, and no petrochemical inputs, the mycelium envelops the by-products, binding them into a strong and beautiful packaging part. Inside every cubic inch of EcoCradle, there’s a matrix of 8 miles of tiny mycelial fibers! At the end of the process, we treat EcoCradle with heat to stop the growth so there will never be any spores.

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If we combine these two things, i beleive it would create not only an effective and a very nice product but it will be environmentally friendly and also cheap to manufacture the laptop, i would have to look into the density of the material and see whether i could make it more sturdy/strong and durable.

Biomimicry

The design of the rubber grips on the surface of the laptop was taken from the images which i looked at to do with nature and biomimicry, here are some of those images.

Grip on laptop

Here i have played around with the shape and placement of the grip on the laptop.

The design above is the idea if the whole laptop was in a different materials such as rubber which would make it much more gripable and comfortable to hold, even the keys and buttons would be made from rubber.

This design is based around the honeycomb pattern, refering back to the nature aspect of things.

The honeycomb shape will be made from rubber grip stripes with the honeycomb shapes in the centre strip being fully grippable material

With the honeycomb pattern being made from rubber gives it much more grip and comfort for the user to carry their laptop.

The design to the right is similar to the honeycomb design above, but this design the grips take on the form similar to the pad of a lizard/geko, scaled pattern again taken from the image that represent nature and biomimcry.

 As you can see here the pattern is all over the face of the laptop but the area at the bottom is where i have noticed is the main area of contact whilst carrying the laptop, so therefore here will have the grippable material.

This image here shows how the laptop would be carried and also shows how my design of having the grippable material at the bottom would be the most effective area to have this.

Grip

Whilst looking into carring a laptop i discovered that maybe they should be more gripable whilst carrying, giving the user more comfort whilst carrying thier laptop. here i have looked into grips and materials which are grippy and will add more stabillity to carrying a laptop.

The most common and used grip is rubber, but there are a few other materials like silicone and chrome which are also good grippable materials. chrome being gripable in the palm of the hand with heat making it grip, for example this material is used on the ipod touch, which works very well and is very effective, there is a little research on this product and how it grips below.

I also did abit more research into how people carry and hold there laptop, to figure out where extra grip would need to be positioned on the laptop.

In the image above i have identified where the grip would need to be mostly, that being down the middle and wider on the ends.

Transport, carrying case, bags

Here i have looked into how laptops are held whilst being transported round, they are carried under the arm, across the chest or in a bag which the strap goes over the shoulder. I was looking into wheter i could design the laptop to be easier to carry/hold by simply changing the shape or material of the laptop.

In the image above there is a nice design of a back pack which your laptop slides into, it is well padded and easy to carry, very handy for outdoor activites such as climbing.

 To the left is a sketch of how maybe i could change the form of the laptop to rest around the waist/body whilst carring it.

To the right is a sketch of how i could incorperate a bag into a laptop, withe the bag actually connected to the laptopwhich is easy to carry,and is simply unzip when needed to use the laptop, this would be waterproof and very tough, making it perfect for outdoor activities. 

Shedding skin, Change, Adjustable

Still looking at nature and its cycle to try and incorperate it with the laptop, i looked at reptiles and how they are constantly changing colour and shedding thier skin, i thought this would be a nice feature to add to a laptop, if you could constantly change your laptop in form, parts and funtion. Or if you were just simply to add a new cover or case, which was similar to the skin of a reptile which shedd or wore off after a period of time.

Above are the existing ways in which you can change and customise your laptop, whether it be a case or cover. I really think it would be very nice if the laptop had this kind of reptile skin which just wore off after a period of time and you could also change the parts whenever you liked.

Tough, Strong, Protective

After looking into laptops i then started looking to nature and senses, here i have researched into tortoises, the reason for this is that tortoises shelss are very tough so i thought maybe if incorperated the strength and toughness of the tortoise shell into a laptop,  would make a very good, tough and reliable laptop.

Here i have looked at existing laptops which are very tough and strong.

After looking at the parts and components of the laptop, i looked into how the laptop opened and closed.

Here i looked at the concept laptop to see what sort of ideas are out there already and what kind of things could be happening to the laptop in the future.

Here i produced a little mind map to discover the things that exsiting laptops already have, what they can do and what people want from them.

In the image above i have started doing some quick sketches just to play around with the form of the laptop, such as what if the laptop had multiple screens, if it projected the screen onto the wall, slid open, or the screen was just much more adjustable/extendable.



To start of this project i looked at the breif and started to do some intial reseach into the main body of the breif, Laptops.

I also started to look at laptops in detail such as there screens, keyboards, track pads, cameras buttons and ports