Plastic Desk Organizers

Design thinking is a more imaginative way to look at problems, shift your perspective, and come up with fresh, better ideas. Design thinking is crucial when designing because this way your design is easier in several ways, you’ve already done a whole process of designing it and you’ve already solved the issues you’ve had when designing. My designs are plastic bottles and paper rolls (without the paper) that were cutted into several different pieces and were turned into material holders. The plastic bottles were turned into a jewelry holder and money storage. The big bottle was turned into a holder for the paper rolls, and the paper rolls holded pens, pencils, markers, etc. This design will help my user have her material organized in a nice holder that is full of colors.

Supplies

The material I used were plastic bottles, paper rolls, paint, paint brushes, and scissors, a knife, or any type of cutting tool.

Step 1: Collecting Materials

Empathy is when you put yourself in others' shoes to feel the same they are feeling. Empathy blends into design thinking because you’re working and designing for others and for others' needs, so you’re putting yourself in their shoes and designing what they want to have. In my case, I had to put myself in Euge’s shoes and think about what would be helpful to her when organizing her materials and at the same time is helping the environment. During the interview with Euge, she told me she used a lot of plastic bottles and that she would like to do something about the amount of plastic she uses. With that information, I came up with this design made out of plastic bottles so that when she has more plastic bottles she can make more organizers. After the interview, the drivers (user’s needs) were cheap, easy, and recyclable, and the constraints (what challenges to solve) were used less plastic and reusable. In the interpretation phase, I first thought of making a plant holder made out of plastic bottles or all my designs separately. Then I realized I could use most of the 10 ideas I had and create one big one, so I put most of them together and used most of the ideas I had.

Step 2: Painting

Ideation is a way of expressing your ideas or thoughts. It is a creative process in which you make, develop, and communicate your ideas. It helps you build a better project and make sure you have done what you need to pick the best one and the right one. I made 10 sketches of a design that would be helpful for my use and I decided to choose more than 1 and combine them to make one big organizer.

Step 3: Cutting

In my design, it is important to check that the organizers can hold well what they are holding. The steps to my project were first collecting all the plastic I was going to use and the paint. I cut a normal plastic bottle into 3 pieces and the middle piece was removed to make it smaller, this then became the money storage. Another plastic bottle was also cut into 2 pieces and the top was removed and the bottom stayed as a jewelry holder. The paper rolls were cut into shorter pieces and then were placed in the bottom part of a detergent plastic bottle.

Step 4: Putting It All Together

In this step, I just put all the cut pieces together and placed them on the desk. In one picture we can see how it looks without the materials and on the other picture will everything placed.