Going in to the project, I was a bit skeptical. I'm not sure why, but the immediacy with which the entire project was handled was oftentimes intimidating, and did not fuel my own creativity. I was only able to generate 4 out of 5 "radical" ideas, and I feel like I only walked away with 1 decent idea—then again, I feel that was the point of the exercise, and while I may not have been as creative as I had wished, I certainly felt like I had a lot of fun and bonded with a new person I had just met this semester.
In the end, I feel that I managed to come up with something relatively unique. It did make me reflect not just on another person's needs, but I began to think deeply about what makes a "good" product. Given the limited resources, I was even able to come up with something that slightly resembled my idea, but ultimately delivered the essence of the product I had in mind, which was really the goal. My partner seemed genuinely interested in the new take on a purse, which I don't believe I've seen either, which felt great to realize.
Essentially, the goal was to allow my partner to be able to store all her necessary items in a purse, but without having it clutter her life. Currently, whenever she goes out, if she wants to pay in cash, she has to take out her wallet, her keys, her phone, and any other miscellaneous item that she's carrying to get to loose change. My idea was to add compartments not in the form of slits or pockets, but in the form of pouches. A bag of pouches, I guess, where the carrier may easily reach down into any pocket. At the exterior, the bag would seem a compressed pouch of fabric, so I imagined some form of elastic or lining would be a great way to enclose each pocket entrance of the bag itself.
Although hard to reach into the crude model, the bag's pockets has a nice lining that should feel comfortable to the user. It also has a resizable strap, which my partner had mentioned was key.
