XII (a project title, pronounced "Zee") is a piece of hardware designed and pre-engineered by myself for a private client who has been kind enough to allow the sharing of selected early-stage development sketches and physical prototypes. While I also worked heavily on the UX, IxD, and usability concerns, this brief look will focus solely on hardware design, specifically the form-finding activity of bringing generative work into a traditional workflow.
XII is a wearable device - feedback-based and not unlike Glass or Android Wear - with a few small quirks. Feedback from XII is unlike that from other wearables in that it aims to leave the users vision open for use at all times, without sacrificing usability.
Crude content was created in Grasshopper (see background of header for layered example) and used as an underlay for form-finding. First it was used to iterate an overall shape, then helped progress the design by offering options and considerations for angularity.
Best form concepts were chosen and brought into Rhino for refinement
Rapid prototyping was used near-constantly throughout the design and refinement process (even during the sketch phases - see sketch models above on far left, created with a 3Doodler). This is a selection of FDM prints used for size, fit, and wearability studies. Later engineering models were printed in SLS.
Below is a final form concept rendering, before the project moved to further stages of development.
