Apologies for not posting for a while. I am back at university and working very hard, as this is the last big one so as to get my degree and really must concentrate. I made a right dog’s dinner with the first block and exam. I will tell you more about that later. Meanwhile, having caught up, I am in the throes of trying to do the next exam. Now, in this module, called Design and Designing, I have to, for Block 2, do a design brief. The idea being, if I studied correctly, I would come up with a proposal of something to a manufacturer.
So I get this idea, and work away and then…as usual, I get this flash of inspiration and it is all there. However, one slight snag. I took a huge risk in the last exam, but even my most faithful followers of my lunacy think this bit might, just might, be pushing the envelope a little tooooo far.
Oh well. Ag Shame, as I did have a right laugh writing it. This is my answer to just one of the loads of questions I have to answer…
So my plan is to present a design brief for a cool system of storage racks for…well read on.
Question 2(b): User profile
I ruled out a large swathe of the human population for several reasons. The list I have narrowed down to a few essential facts. The Inuit natives of Alaska, Siberian reindeer herders, the nomadic Bedouin tribes of the Saudi Peninsula and Antarctica scientists are not on it. This is because I realised large top loaded freezers do not fit in kayaks or sledges and camels get the hump (as the constant roaring of the petrol powered generator disturbs their sleep), and in the Antarctica they have the biggest deep freeze on the planet working for free 24/7. That left a handful of potential users. Most of them appear regularly in the Daily Mail [online] that I occasionally glance at for research reasons that we as students must do to expand our cerebral capacities.
Here is my user profile -
User characteristic
Age: 37, but looks twice that.
Sex: Obviously she is having far too much.
Physical limitations: Due to her debilitating, genetically inherited disease (she was diagnosed with obesity disabilities at the age of seven), shifting off the couch just to use the toilet is a pain in the arse. This odd fact has nothing to do with the product proposal. Quite the opposite actually. My proposal is about filling orifices, not emptying them. Suffice to say she isn’t very active; unless procreating.
Top loaded freezer experience: Quite a lot actually. At the age of 9 she threw a serious wobbly when the Walker’s crisps ran out from the pack of 24 she had opened just after dinner and the drunken male friend of her mother popped her in one for half an hour - so as too ‘chill out a bit’.
Motivation: None whatsoever.
Attitude: A rather bad one.
I developed the following persona for someone falling within my user profile.
Hillary-Porsche Swindleton is a single mother with seven children from five different multi-cultural sources. They all live at home with her except the youngest, 23 month old Victoria-Mercedes, who is serving at present a 16 month custodial sentence for ‘borrowing’ a two pence lollipop from a 99pence store during last year’s riots. Hillary-Porsche is presently heavily pregnant with twins from her present boyfriend, a Zimbabwean asylum seeker who works part time as a delivery driver for Iceland. She works hard as a labourer. Many of her labour takes several hours but she says she is getting used to the job and finds it now relatively easy work. Hillary-Porsche lives in an area of the United Kingdom with no glass houses but a lot of stone throwing.
Her biggest problem is feeding her ever growing offspring. To help, the council has supplied a large, top loaded deepfreeze which has replaced the space in the kitchen where the sink would normally be, but next to the microwave, a 20litre deep fat fryer, a bucket full of disposable knifes and forks, and a large industrial sized wheelie bin.
Hillary-Porsche struggles to satisfy the ever increasing demands of her brooding, bored, benefit bred children. To make thinks easier for her, the freezer is constantly stuffed stupid with food delivered from Iceland every Thursday by Lovemore Sibanda, her on-off present boyfriend. For a kiss and a cuddle he drags the full bin out - bang on time, and fills the freezer. However problem arises with the storage for the various ‘Zap Em, and Crap Em’ microwavable delicacies. Due to the poor internal configuration of baskets and Hilary-Porsche’s difficulty in lifting anything heavier than a two litre bottle of 8% proof cider, the smartly packaged, plastic packets, get packed higgilty-piggilty. In fact, it seems that Lovemore simply tips the lot straight into it.
As a result, there are often massive brawls between the children. For example - such as when the eldest, Horatio, a gay 25 years old, claimed he failed once again as a contestant on X-Factor (tenth attempt), when Simon Cowell reduced him to tears by cynically telling him
“You don’t have a fat chance in hell of ever singing for your supper.”
When Horatio explained he was very weak because he couldn’t find the faggots he wanted for lunch as they were buried under halal pseudo KFC chicken strips, pork loin chops, that didn’t appear very kosher, and piles of Chinese made pizzas that his half-brother of Naples ancestry eats 24/7; he was laughed off stage. As a result he suffers from lack of self esteem and gets depressed even when watching repeats of the Jeremy Kyle show.
It is therefore imperative for a clearly marked system of storage baskets attached to a mechanised system that creates easy access for every conceivable taste and cultural preferences. This includes having a receptacle to contain exploded bottles of frozen sauerkraut that, for some bizarre reason, Kozlowski, the 12 year old son (named after an infamous Polish plumber who came to repair a broken toilet seat), enjoys eating the stuff - broken glass and all.
