Ergonomic Drill Design
Human Centred Design
February 2017
This human centred design module involved taking an existing product and challenging conventions, and rethinking elements of it, allowing it to be used more easily by an audience that might previously have struggled. I chose to redesign a conventional hand drill, and tailor its design towards a more casual user, by making the controls more intuitive and simpler to use. This involved researching my demographic, model-making with the use of anthropometric data, and testing these models with potential users.
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The final outcome was a fully weighted 1:1 scale model of the product, with working buttons and triggers, with the focus on function rather than aesthetics. A set of 2D renders created on Adobe Illustrator was also provided to show the product's appearance.
A brief video demonstrating the drill's features
The product's main goal was to prevent amateur users from being put off by drill's overly complex and uninviting designs. For this reason the product's design was kept minimal, with only 2 main textures clearly indicating where the buttons were. The product features no writing whatsover, with the intention that the design is intuitive enough for the user to be able to use it comfortably after just a few minutes of handling it, with the user testing showing that this was typically the case.
