2010 - Present; Industrial Design, Prototyping, Design Research, Patent pursuit
Developed from nearly 9 months of user research and testing, the Tool Canvas is an innovative user behavior based, tool organization/storage/transport system.
The background
During the Summer of 2009, I spent a good deal of time helping my grandfather organize his vast collection of tools and projects, accumulated during his many years as a shop teacher and inventor. It became clear that although many of his tools were neatly organized on pegboard in the garage, my grandfather worked on projects all over the place - the yard, the house, the back building, his church!
My father and I designed and built him a rolling, A-frame pegboard cart for his birthday - he could store many hand tools and some larger power tools on this rolling project cart. This "beta" solution became the groundwork for my senior industrial design thesis, dealing with the discrepancies between the way people store their tools, and how and where they use them.
The work
Currently, the Tool Canvas has:
- Patent Pending status, with 22 claims
- 80+ pages of research and development documentation support
- A working prototype, currently in-use at my apartment
The challenge
Even after discovering a hole in the seemingly flooded market of products for tool storage, organization and transportation solutions, developing a solution that would work with existing user behaviors, adapt to their unique tool sets and project requirements, and integrate with their preferred method of working was a challenge.
