Case study
Electric Paint — Explaining a new material for making circuits and sensors.
WHAT IS ELECTRIC PAINT?
Electric Paint is a prototyping tool created by Bare Conductive. It works just like conventional poster paint, but it also conducts electricity. It's nontoxic, solvent free and water soluble, which makes it accessible to anyone from professionals to schoolchildren.
AIM
The aim of this project was to transition Electric Paint from its R&D phase into a retail friendly product and to expand on the technical and educational resources with the aim to widen its appeal to anyone with an idea and will to make something.
PROCESS + RESULT
When I joined the project in 2012 the Electric Paint was the main product manufactured by Bare Conductive. Together with the brand restyling, I worked on the communication of the paint as well as a line of paper craft-like starter kit products which provided an introduction to using the material in an easy and fun way. Parallel to the entry level commercial design we also wanted to make the paint appeal to engineers and other professionals. In 2013, after a successful Kickstarter campaign, Bare Conductive released the Touch Board which allowed the paint to be used as a sensor. The fact that now you could make any graphical sensors and program them to create cheap, tactile, physical interactions was a game changer. The community of users embraced the two technologies working together, creating inspiring content which in turn fueled our team to develop new products, as well as expand on the applications of the paint, moving away from paper engineering and increasing the physical scale of the interactions.
Industry | Consumer Electronics
Client | Bare Conductive / as a part of in-house team
Location | London, 2013 — 2016
Scope | My involvement with the Touch Board, in all its forms began with the PCB UX design and continued through all design development stages, including working with suppliers on packaging production as well as creative direction and design of communication materials to support the product, including tutorials, workshop materials, online tutorials, marketing as well as technical spec sheets.