Help me please!!!!!

Hey there wonder if anybody could help me??

I am a product Designer at huddersfield university currently in my final year. I have been given a project which is very broad, bascally I can design anything I want. I thought about designing a new garden tool, or a redesign.

Basically I need to find some problems which I can then design a product for!

Is there any problems when gardening?
Any exsisting products which you think could be better?
Anything where you think there could be a product?

If you could give me any help that would mean alot to mean!!

Cheers James:ntwrth:

 

My main problems are boggy ground (on clay, after it rains for a couple of days the garden turns boggy) and slugs! But from a design of tools or implements to use in the garden, I'm happy as I am. But then I have a smaller space to work with.

 

THe problem is, us gardeners are quite a resourseful lot... and will solve our own problems.

I tend to find that most new garden products that come on to the market are filling a need that isn't really there!

How about a wheel barrow that doesn't get punctures.. or can go up steps.

 

I agree with everything Quercus just said, except that you can get wheel barrows with solid tyres.

That said, if you can build me a fully autonomous robotic psycho ferret that can get the rabbits of my land, I'd buy it

To be honest, I think if you go with the garden tool theme you're going to struggle. There is already a tool for just about every job imaginable, and if you happen to find you haven't got the right tool, like Quercus said, its just a case of solving it, often with whatever happens to be around at the time.

 

Ditto the self-invention, I think most gardeners will solve their own 'missing' tool conundrum.

There are however 2 things which I'd find useful - neither of which are strictly tools. The first would be greenhouse staging with 'retractable' wheels - something whereby you could pull a lever, raise the staging up on its wheels, pull it out to move and/or clean behind, then drop it down again.

The second would be external greenhouse shading - something which worked along the lines of those cheap bamboo blinds, but which could be fitted easily to the apex of aluminium greenhouses and raised or lowered quickly and easily (for those 'odd' hot days when you don't want permanent shading).

 

thanks for your responses,

I will take your advice and move away from the garden tool area, however the greenhouse area could be a go-er.

All I need to know from you guys is the problem areas, your the experts!!

Any problem at all, from bending over to growing veg! My job is to try and resolve the problem!

Thanks for all your responses so far, keep them coming !!!!!

 

Perhaps look at adapting a wheelbarrow (in much the same way Dyson did with vacuum cleaners) maybe? I don't have a wheelbarrow, so maybe their design has come on in leaps and jumps since I used the ramshackle piece of rubbish my parents had 20 years ago!