6. Prototyping II

Just the week after the Malaysia trip, we gathered at Pandan Valley to start on our second prototyping. With more materials to play around with, we ended up with 2 more prototypes.

As seen above, apart from the jars used, the 2 products are quite different in design and theme. The one on the left was mainly done by Kimmy and Aaron, and the idea was to capture a small piece of nature in its actual size. A dried rose was put onto a patch of artificial grass and a bed of white rocks. Then, an exquisite butterfly was painstakingly crafted from dried blue petals and put on the edge of the glass. To further show contrast between the 2 main elements, we chose blue petals to assemble the butterfly as opposed to the bright crimson of the rose. Together with the dirt green colour of the grass, it really feels like taking a piece of nature and putting it into a glass jar.

On the other hand, the jar on the right was built with a totally different direction in mind. Mainly done by me and Sindy, the idea was to create a miniature world in the jar using figurines and snippets of dried flower. The one we created used a pink sand base, a foam cuboid, with various elements attached on top such as a flower gate made from gluing two stems of purple dried flowers, a rabbit and bear figurine, a fence and some small flowers by their side.

Of course, both products have their own problems.

For the first one, a lot of time was taken to build the butterfly. This is due to a combination of factors such as needing the glue to dry for several times and the great difficulty in cutting the grass patch (its base was very tough). Moreover, there is a concern that the whole 'capture a small piece of nature in a glass jar' will not be popular, as the product by itself still looks plain, yet in order to present its elements in their actual real life sizes (rose, grass, butterfly), there is no more space to add in more components. Most importantly, there is very little room for innovation too. Customers might not be willing to pay a high price for such products.

As for the second one, there are many problems with the design too. Firstly, the foam is quite difficult to work with, as it is very brittle and gets out of shape easily. There is no room for errors, as once a figurine is stuck into the foam, it should not be moved again, or the foam will be damaged. The miniature size of the elements also make it hard to place them, as a high level of precision is required. Lastly, it takes about equally long as the first product to make, so time is an issue too.

That's all for prototyping this time, from now on we will be meeting much more frequently since we have the supplies to make products.