Arduino Engineering Kit
Roles
Product Design, Graphic Design, Packaging Design, 3D Visuals, 3D Rendering, 3D Animations, Art Direction
Year
2017-2019
Arduino Engineering Kit is a collaboration project between Arduino and Mathworks which aims to teach university students Matlab and Simulink, which are industry standard software for all engineering fields for making calculations, through learn by doing methodology. It consist of 3 projects; drawing robot, mobile rover and self-balancing motorcycle, which are chosen to cover the most common usage scenarios of the mentioned software.
I was present in almost all stages of product development from concept creation and prototyping to component sourcing, packaging design, creation of content visuals and marketing assets. Involvement in all stages of product development was a great opportunity to get experience in finding the balance between seeing the big picture and also having attention to detail.
Product Design
After the 3 projects that would cover the concepts that are in the curriculum best were decided, I was the responsible for physical prototypes in close collaboration with the hardware engineers in our team. The projects came with the budget, weight, size and electronic components’ properties’ restrictions. Therefore, in the end, we decided go with flat assembly pieces that are CNC cut from ABS for the projects. Throughout the process, the most challenging parts were to make these three distinctively different projects look like a part of a family and to do millimeter and gram calculations in each step to make sure that the torque of the motors are capable of handling the stress they are facing.
Final Products
Here are the finished look of the 3 projects; self-balancing motorcycle, drawing robot and mobile rover.
Packaging Design
I was also involved in the packaging design process of the Enginnering Kit. This was actually a part of a bigger effort. During this time, we were also looking to find a packaging supplier that has a variety of sizes for their boxes that we can use for all of our educational products to establish an Arduino look thourought our product offering. I was involved in researching and testing products of several producers. After settling with a company and their products, I continued with designing the compartments for the components. The challenge here for the design of the compartments was that some of the components are quite delicate and they needed to be protected during shipping. I came up with two different alternative designs and managed two different freelancers to produce the prototypes for my concepts.
Final Packaging
In the end, we decided to move forward with the cardboard design to minimize our plastic usage and the possibility to make alterations easier on the design if an update on the components needed in the future.
3D Visuals and Illustrations
The challenges creating the content visuals for me were that the content is translated to multiple languages, so the text usage on the visuals needed to be limited. I also had the aim to create the visuals in such an alignment that even if the users just skimm through the visuals without reading the content, they should have an understanding of the main points of the chapters. As we worked closely with content my engineer colleagues throughout the product development, I also had a good insight of the content they were writing which helped me immensly. In addition to static visuals to aid the educational content, I also created assembly animations for the 3 projects.
Mobile Rover Assembly Video
Art Direction
As a part of the marketing effort of the Engineering Kit, we also had a photo shooting session focusing on in-context scenarios. I took the art director role during this photo shoot. We collaborated with a local agency for this process, however, as we had limited resources in terms of location and props, we had to be creative. Our target group, the university students, use this kit in groups of 2-3 in classrooms with assistance by their professors. The feeling I tried to convey through these photos was learning can be engaging and fun while showcasing the 3 projects as the center of the focus.
