What an unexpected and all consuming journey this project has been.  It has been both rewarding and, at times, soul destroying!

In the beginning, I started looking at conductive inks and fabrics, but it was while I was developing my cultural probe that I finally became set on the outline for this project. My direction was changed not just through the feedback I received but also through the process of making a pop-up book. I really loved working out the mechanisms and folds. The book seemed like a fun way to get people to engage with the questions, while finding out the things they value and can’t live without. My cultural probes were really successful, all of them have been returned having been filled in using a variety of mediums and styles. People also commented on how much they had enjoyed their involvement in the process of completing it, because the pop-up style made it fun.

I really wanted to re create this interaction into a product. Something the user had to take part in, to get involved with, and enjoy with someone else. I wanted to create a giant pop-up that was a fun but would transform into something functional and useful. ‘The pop-up picnic.’

Having prototyped everything on a small scale my main worry was that I wouldn’t get all the mechanisms to work when I scaled it to full size. I didn’t want it to be unwieldy so keeping the footprint as small as possible was my first challenge. I also wanted it, at first glance, to look like a rather unassuming cardboard box, but when opened up, it then turned into it’s own little piece of theatre.

In many ways I think I managed to achieve this but I would have liked the whole thing to be lighter! The volume of paper I needed to make the honeycomb chairs strong has made the whole thing much heavier than I would have liked.

Working in paper also has its problems. Although the chairs do work they have had a serious amount of handling since I first made them and this is already starting to show in both their aesthetics and structure. I had to accept early on that his was the nature of the medium I had chosen to work in. Paper needs to be treated with a certain amount of care, which, at times was frustrating!

Structurally I have identified the weak points within the apple shape of the chairs, which again, had only become apparent after a huge amount of handling.  If I were to make them again I would do more testing on the structure and longevity of the shapes rather than the aesthetics of the chair.

The table, as a pop-up worked brilliantly, until it was set outdoors on uneven ground. My perfectly balanced table was no more! I had already identified the need for weights and outriggers at the base of the ‘V’ itself to provide opposite tensions in the table structure. Unfortunately these measures were inadequate on wobbly ground and in windy weather, so I incorporated the guy ropes at the last minute, which actually fitted in really well with the outdoors picnic experience. I would also re think the fabric covering on the ‘V’ and maybe just have it around the hinge area and not on the legs.

I feel I have achieved a good solid prototype and have solved many of the problems. Time management was an issue because of the sheer amount of work involved in making the small scale model and then scaling it up, particularly the pivot point which was a bit of a headache because I was determined to keep my materials in keeping with my card, paper and fabric theme, (tree related goods!)

Having said all that, I feel the end product has been worth all the remodelling, reworking, rethinking and remaking. My pop-up picnic is fun and functional.