Animal phone case with headphones (2013)

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Phone and music player case aimed at children. Features headphones that can be reeled in when not in use. The arms and legs are flexible to allow the case to fit a range of devices.

This university project set the task of designing for someone with a hobby. With such an open ended brief, the group sought to explore some options through mindmapping and later using sticky notes to produce inital concepts. Topics included photography, cooking, gaming, toys and sports but we decided to move forward with music since all members had experience in listening and producing music.

We opted to develop headphones that solve some user problems identified in concept generation. These were:

- The wire getting tangled in storage

- Forgetting to bring headphones

- Missing a track after removing the headphones to speak to someone

Based on this some concepts were developed such as this, where the wire is integrated into a phone case or wallet and the ear buds are made collapsible.

We decided to focus our efforts on a particular target market which was children. Smartphones and music players are becoming common with younger users so a fictional persona was made to give us a design reference.

Existing childrens' phone accessories were researched.

Our research showed childrens' cases often incorporate animals. The final concept was a phone or ipod case in the shape of a frog. Headphones are integrated into the case and can be reeled in by pressing the frog's back. The design imitates the frog's tongue grabbing insects.

A CAD model was made and I rendered this in Keyshot. I had to become familiar with new tools in Solidworks to model the cables. The body material would be a soft feel polymer.

Flexible soft legs or integrated wire in the legs would allow the case to wrap and grip any similarly sized device.

I went on to add a second model to the range. This time an elephant shape was modelled with all the same functions as the frog and the wire having a likeness to water from the elephant's trunk.

Although not shown, the ear buds would feature a pressure or conductivity sensor that can detect whether it is in your ear or not. Existing headphones already have the functionality for pausing and playing music with an in-line button so the same signals would be used in our headphones to pause music when the bud is removed.