Flutter
This is what joy looks like!
Skills
Project Management
UX Research
Physical Design
Tools
Textiles/Patterns
Sewing Machines
Deliverables
Flutter
Flutter Presentation
Flutter Mobile Website
Team
Daniella Lumkong
Griffin Somaratne
Xavier Vasquez
Purpose
Senior Capstone Project
Flutter, a versatile tote bag and portable swing, ignites spontaneous fun for college students. Its vibrant design makes setting up a swing on the go easy—less than 5 minutes and you're swinging between classes or during study breaks. Flutter's playful setup encourages creativity! Taking it down is just as quick, under 2 minutes. Seamlessly add excitement to your college routine with Flutter!
The Design Process
January - March
Needfinding Process
We conducted in depth interviews with college students as well as surveyed over 100 undergraduates to understand their day to day and specifically how they spend time in their day to decompress. Our research revealed three primary needs:
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There was a desire to integrate play into their packed schedules
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There was a need for a mental break from responsibilities
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They felt like they needed to have a reason/justification to play
After understanding our users better we decided to interview experts in this field. We learned about different forms of play and the psychology behind play in young adults. We began to synthesize the data we collected and came up with the following design challenges to ideate on:
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How might we bring play into routine tasks?
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How might we initiate spontaneity throughout the day for college students?
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How might we create short bursts of fun throughout the day?
Below you can find some pictures of our synthesis and brainstorming process. Also feel free to check out out our FigJam where we conducted our synthesis.
Prototyping
The first type of play we wanted to prototype around was storytelling. As shown below, we explored storytelling play through an anonymous confession board in white plaza at Stanford. We built off of this idea to create a voice mailbox for listening and leaving voice memos throughout the day. This performed well in a dorm community but did not attract attention out on campus, so we ultimately decided not to move forward with this idea.
At the same time, we explored physical play through a cardboard swing, pictured below, at lake lag on Stanford's campus. In 3 hours, we had over 20 people test out the swing. We found that people were attracted to how it was immersive, shareable, and a little dangerous. Because of the swing’s success, we wanted to make it more convenient and fit it into a Stanford student’s busy schedule.
These insights brought us to Flutter! A book bag that can convert into a swing. With Flutter, Stanford students can turn the small moments in their day into short bursts of fun anywhere on campus. Pictured below was our very first prototype of Flutter. We created it with an old tote bag, some velcro, and carabiners.
Creating Flutter
April - June
More Prototyping :)
When we finally landed on an idea, we needed to fine tune it with prototyping and user testing. Below you can find sketches we had for our design.
We began by prototyping the seat bag design - our second prototype of Flutter.
We learned a lot about our design from user testing. While users enjoyed the idea of Flutter the experience wasn't exactly the best. We learned that we needed to make the seat and handles comfier and the set up and take down process simpler. These findings led us to develop an easier set up and take down process for the third prototype pictured below. We also re-designed the seat to be comfier. Prototype 3, pictured below, is a similar design to the seat panel sketch, pictured above.
While we simplified the set up and take down process we also decided to gamify the process to make it a more enjoyable experience. Additionally, we realized the seat was slightly over-engineered. We added padding to the seat but realized that did not impact comfort but rather the new pattern design allowed for comfort. Ultimately, we landed on the design pictured below.
Creating the 1st Flutter
When we finally landed on a design, we knew we needed some extra support to make our idea a reality. We also knew our materials were not to the best to create a durable and polished product so we reached out to Amyel Oliveros, creative director at WaterField Designs.
After meeting with Amyel, we were able to figure out where to buy durable materials for our swing and lucky for us, Amyel allowed us to use his workshop to build Flutter.
We created an original sewing pattern for Flutter and attached the necessary hardware to make Flutter - after a few hours of working we finally created an official Flutter bag.
Making it real in the world
To launch Flutter, we hosted a Swarty (swing party) where students could set up and enjoy Flutter together. At the swarty, 50 students expressed interest in purchasing their own Flutter bag through our interest form. Below is what some users had to say.
Footage of our launch can be found in our promo video! If you'd like to hear more about FLutter, I invite you to reach out to me!
