Jay Langdon is a 2009 graduate from the 3D Design (Industrial Design) program at Curtin University of Technology in Western Australia.
Jay, Welcome to Design Droplets. Thank you for taking the time to talk, could you please give a quick introduction on yourself.
First of all thanks a lot for the opportunity I have been an avid reader of Design Droplets for the last year and it’s great to have such a relevant resource for industrial design for the region, keep up the good work.
I am a local West Australian, from one of the tiniest towns you have ever seen, Shackleton, who has spent the last three years doing something that I have dreamed about for some time. I have worked all over the world in the poorest and the wealthiest environments fixing problems and gathering troubleshooting skills for all manner of situations. I am now keen to get into the design stream and see if I can use my skills to help in as many ways as possible.
Can you tell me a bit about your final project?
Well at Curtin we have a final third year which has four units each semester, each with its own project, so if I may I would like to explain three.
The first was a project for a unit called Client Project, which encouraged students to get out of their comfort zone, approach the outside world with their tool set and see what they could design. It was a very open and challenging unit. To cut a long story short I had always found design for mobility lacked emotion and imagination and found myself designing a table for quadriplegics through a spinal rehabilitation centre at one of the local hospitals in Perth. The process was challenging, but great fun working with young enthusiastic patients, concerned and demanding occupational therapists and some very dry and entertaining engineers who had seen it all. A scaled prototype was all that was required for the unit presentation, but as I had come this far and the need was evident I continued to make the full scale prototype during the semester break. I was quite happy with the final outcome which I made mostly myself in the university workshop and my father’s back shed. The leg extension mechanism and table top I had manufactured by contractors. One glaring mistake I was unsure to mention here was that I did not have the corners rounded on the table sections, but as it is still a prototype I can always do better with then next one. The main idea of the table is that there is nothing on any market that allows the wheelchair user to position themselves comfortably at a working height or position. The table adjusts in many ways to allow the wheelchair user at any level of ability to drive into the table and therefore gain greater access to the table surface. On completion I donated the table to one of the young guys whom I worked with for his endless enthusiasm in being my test pilot.
The second project was for another challenging unit in much the same requirements as the previous. This time it so happened that a local engineering company was seeking the services of a young keen designer to help them road register a kit car they were importing from England. The company had acquired the rights to import the cars to Australia and New Zealand. For the cars to be registered here in Western Australia they needed some modifications to the front end to hide the exposed chassis tubing. I gained the contract to first design, model then produce the front panel. The client was very happy with the work and forwarded the design to the English manufacturer who are also interests in importing the panels from Australia. Please check my web site for a more comprehensive process report. In parallel to the front end work the company was also keen to run some finite element analysis tests on the stiffness of their chassis. I also was able to measure, model and carry out these tests for the firm to see where more strengthening may be required. These tests were carried out in Solidworks while the front panel modeling was done in Rhino.
The final project I will talk about was for an interior design unit, which was basically a sustainable design unit revolving around the themes desire, waste and sustainability. In short we had to use off cuts or other waste material to build a piece of furniture and explain its relationship to these themes. I found my inspiration in a far corner of the local recycling centre where I found a pile of discarded signage. I used an entire Pizza Hut sign and folded it into a table, an idea taken from the quickly discarded fast food wrapping and also to prevent production of further waste by cutting the sign. I tried to keep the production methods low tech, by scraping and sanding one side by hand and then drilling holes to weaken the metal, then folding the form by hand. The four folds underneath have spot welds in each corner being the only fixative. I purposely left the Pizza Hut signage on the underside as a reminder of the table’s history giving the object a story and therefore a life.
Which part of the design industry do you hope to venture into?
I would love to be a part of a design consultancy which works on all manner of projects, but basically I just want to get into the stream. Once in the design industry I hope to learn as much as I can about as much as I can to really find out what I may be most helpful at.
What would your dream project be, if you could design for anyone or design anything and put it into production?
That is a tough one for me, I am a man of varied interests and I would love to get into so many things. An example may be something that does not annoy you, does not waste your time, makes life easy, is respected for its functionality, good to look at, does not break under normal conditions and is not too toxic. I think just to be able to design something really really good whatever that may be would be a pretty cool thing to do. It would not even need to be a thing, I would be interested to try my hand at anything problem solving wise. I did not major in it, but I find interaction design fascinating and would love to have a go at that as well. Anything really I find it all a great challenge and great fun.
Jay, thanks for taking the time to talk with us here at Design Droplets. Do you have any final thoughts to share with Design Droplets readers?
Sign up for this blog as it is a good one, keep up to date with what’s going on in the world, not just the design world, even in your street and keep your mind open, design can be used to solve any problem.
