Bassic | TiernanDowd

Background

In this project, we had our first client interaction outside of UL. These customers would visit UL and speak with the students to discuss their problems. Teams were formed from the entire class. Ihsan kamil, Kiernan O'Dowd, and Jordan Schmidt made up my team.

Our Customer: Eric Higgins -Double Bassists -Aarhus Symphony Orchestra

Brief

'Coordinate with the client to make the Double Base easier to use'

Ideation

To begin the ideation process, we created a double bass scale model that was 1:1. This helped us later as we developed our concepts. With the help of our client, we were able to discover more about Double Bass and the area of use. Communication with our client was difficult as he wasn't in Ireland, therefore we had to find musicians locally to assist us. To begin our study, we spoke with a variety of users, including the UL orchestra and music retailers. We were told that double bassists were extremely hard to come by in Ireland, but we found a couple who would help us in testing our prototypes.

Through our investigation, we were able to comprehend the crucial elements that affected the Bass. Clothing, injury avoidance, travel, local communities, and bass playing were the five headings that would be utilized for the Ideation phase.

We circulated sheets of paper with the heading on them several times to help generate ideas rapidly. We generated 18 pages of ideas and thoughts.

The project had a 6-week hard deadline, so we had to focus on one topic and begin developing it as the research was time consuming. We choose to focus on injury avoidance when playing the bass.

Concept Development

User Testing

Through Ideation, we created a number of concepts that we started to present and test with our users. To support the musicians while they played, we tried wrist restraints, but when we showed them to the UL double-bassists, they objected to how restricting they were.

Then, to balance the double bass on the player's shoulder and free up their hands, I designed a double bass shoulder arm. Nevertheless, user research showed that this would worsen player performance and lead to more finger fatigue.

I then focused on the same concept, this time focusing on the hips as opposed to the shoulder. We even developed a streamlined and brief version of the idea. This was the user's preferred course, so we carried on in that way.

Final Concept

The Double Bass would rest on the user's hips in our design's ultimate iteration, which was built on a saddle. The saddle increased the surface area of the point of contact without changing the sound of the Double Bass or getting in the way of the Double Bassist, as opposed to holding the Bass with the arms (when playing)

The final week of the project was spent getting ready to present to our clients. A marketing board and a showcase prototype had to be created. I created a final model of the idea in a 1:1 scale. The final model's representation of leather for the saddle is soft foam, which we chose because it is a durable material that stretches and conforms to the user over time. Since all the basses have a glossy texture that allows the suction cups to stick, Impacting the music quality, we decided to use them as the connection.

The marketing board's creation is a project unto itself. The marketing board took much longer than anticipated because it was necessary to carefully consider the colour schemes, text layout, and hero image. We decided on burgundy to go with the motif of the orchestra and green as a contrasting colour.

To finish renderings for the poster, a SolidWorks model of the chosen design was created. We used a dark wood grain for the concept because it complemented the double bass and created a fantastic colour scheme for the poster.