Calum McCarthy is a Final Year Product Design Student. Over his time in TU Dublin, Calum was highly commended for design in the Bolton Trust as part of team Phonics. This project was also shortlisted for the final round of the Enterprise Ireland competition. In 3rd year he engaged in an external part-time internship with AREA 22, a start up company. In this role, he collaborated with a team of Product Designers, incorporating, and testing natural speech and AI for an application.
The Problem
The average cost per square meter in Dublin of land has risen to €1800 - €2700. This means space in the home is becoming increasingly tighter, as are the options on the housing market for larger, affordable housing. Resolving mess has more value than ever before in the current financial climate and can be a much more cost-effective method than upsizing a home.
The identified problem in the household was the bedroom as it can become a messy area when they are not tidied on a daily basis. This leads to clothes being left on the floor, at the end of the bed or most commonly hanging off the back of a chair. The ‘clothes chair’ is a problem that most households face and encourages the build-up of mess in the bedroom. Throughout the primary research of this project, it was found that clothes would be thrown onto a chair and then when the chair was ready to be used, the clothes would be shifted onto the bed.
SPRING
The SPRING clothes hanger aims to tackle the problem of the clothes chair and the knock-on effects associated with it. This innovative, adaptable clothes hanger seconds as clothes peg to be used on the back of a chair, side of a desk or at the end of a bed, allowing its user to hang their clothes off the peg in a tidy manner. Furthermore, when the user is ready the peg acts as a self-expanding hanger, removing the difficulties found when fitting hangers inside small necks of clothing or the lengths of having to unbutton and rebutton a shirt that needs to be hung up. The SPRING clothes hanger is designed to work in synergy with the common behaviours that cause mess and allows them to be used in a positive fashion, creating lasting tidying habits for all users. This adaptable hanger is the first.
3 Step Process
The SPRING hanger takes a 3-step approach to solving this problem:
STEP 1:
Allows the user to continue throwing their clothes on their chair in a visually tidier fashion.
STEP 2:
The user can then transfer the clothes peg with the clothes hanging off it to other surfaces when they need to use the chair etc.
STEP 3:
Finally, the user can hang their clothes up in a seamless fashion by using the automatic expandable hanger feature which limits the user input needed when hanging up an item of clothing