DESIGNING A PRODUCT: Painter's Palette to Enhance Paint Preservation
PROJECT: Design a Paint Palette for artists that preserves both oil and acrylic paint for longer periods of time.
PROBLEM: Preliminary research for our design showed that acrylic paint is usable for an average of 24 hours after being placed on a palette and oil paint is usable for 7 days.
Upon returning to work on projects, professional artists, students, or hobbyists with limited time for painting sessions are often met with dried up paint. This results in more money being spent on art supplies. Additionally, attempts to recreate a pre-mixed color used in a piece is difficult and results in wasted time and effort by the artist.
USER RESEARCH: In identifying the problem and user needs, my group conducted 10 interviews with a range of palette users. We spoke to art professionals and both intro and expert level student artists and art teachers. We observed artists in their studios, sent out a survey of art habits and searched through existing palette designs and reviews to identify all opportunities to explore.
We found that users needed a palette that would preserve paint while also being easy to set-up, use, clean, and store.
PROTOTYPING and PRODUCT TESTING: We brainstormed concepts as a team and held an open brainstorm session with artists, engineers, and peers in order to come up with the best possible paint-saving methods. We used a standard palette with paint exposed to the air, a palette covered in plastic wrap (the most common work-around method used by artists), and the top-rated product - the sta-wet palette - as controls. We created works-like prototypes for a freezing palette, an adjustable rubber cover, a vacuum sealed design, an air-tight container and others.
At the same time, we spoke to another set of artists about preferences of shape, size, material, and other defining qualities that could be applied to the paint preserving method.
FINAL DESIGN: The final design was an air-tight, 12"x16" glass-based palette with acrylic sides and a rubber lined lid. The air-tight seal allows for paint to last 16x times longer than when on an open-air palette and 2.5x longer than when covered in plastic wrap.
Performance testing was done by 5 professional artists who were asked to set-up, store, and clean the palette. The participants also gave a 1-5 rating of ease for the specification of ease of set-up, usage, durability, storage, and cleaning. The new design scored higher than the artist's current palettes in all categories.
FUTURE ITERATIONS: Future iterations of this design would include a base made completely of glass with a thinner lid, non-slip feet, and a higher durometer rubber seal. Additionally, when brought to market, the lid and base could be sold separately so that an artist could stack bases with one lid.