Shark
The brief was to work with the US team to quickly develop a hair drying brush and heated comb. The main factor that was considered throughout this project was cost as it was vital to the client that a specific BOM cost was attained without removing any desired features from the product. I was collaborating with the US team on this project from R&D handover all the way through to mass production
Contract Designer 2022 - 2023
The design had to package a motor, air heater, heated tines & PCBA while sticking to strict handle size requirements so that it was still user friendly. The main challenges were:
Balancing the overall shape with airflow performance, this meant working closely with the US industrial design team members and iterating the designs daily
Ensuring the touch temperatures of the handle were compliant. Double walls, insulating air gaps and mica sheets had to be built in to achieve this
Developing strong covers for the hot tines that did not break during drop testing but could still resist the maximum hot tine temperatures >180°C
The pink hot tines were developed with a wave profile to ensure maximum contact with hair as it passed through. There were also a requirements for air slots and bristles to be as close to the tines as possible. This required multiple versions and in depth discussions with the China tooling team to create side actions on the brush faces that could achieve these features