Young Designers 2011

		Young Designers 2011
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Aman Dubey | mail.amandubey@gmail.com

Redesigning the Indoor Unit for a Split AC

Product Design | GDPD
Guide: Shashank Mehta
Sponsor: Whirlpool, Gurgaon

Keywords
Split AC
Indoor unit
Aesthetics
Engineering

My project’s brief was to design a split AC indoor unit (IDU). The project was conceptual and the process, at Whirlpool, has been christened, ‘The Concept Car Approach’, for their efforts to emulate automobile design processes to bring forth new product ideas. The directives were to put forward new ideas for the foreseeable future, based on the needs and aspirations of users and inputs from engineers, marketing and sales executives. While the focus of my project was to suggest solutions for the IDU, I did ideate on other components of the split AC system such as the outdoor unit (ODU), UI, remote, etc.

The project aimed not only to design a new encasing for the IDU but also experiment with it at a platform level. For this, I had to study air-conditioning technology, interact with experts and conduct a product teardown to study the IDU’s various components. I surveyed users and sales executives and with inputs from marketing executives, I deduced the human quotient (i.e. aspirations in the form of functions, features and aesthetics), keeping in mind the brand’s essence. While conceptualizing the forms, I had to consider Whirlpool’s visual brand language (VBL). In spite of the few limitations, the concepts were as varied as the sources of inspiration.

The final concepts strive to satisfy the user’s needs and aspirations while functionality, practicality, the brand’s VBL and creativity act as their cornerstones.

This project gave me the freedom to think freely within an invisible framework. It allowed the amalgamation of creative expression and reason, true to the spirit of industrial design. It gave me the opportunity to work with various experts in my endeavour to create aesthetically pleasing and practical air-conditioning solutions.