Product Studio — Plastiform, RAY
Earth is no longer capable of sustaining stable long-term life, and this spacecraft is part of an early migration and reconnaissance program designed to secure humanity’s future beyond it.
The vessel functions as a self-sustaining transit settlement carrying approximately 2,000 carefully selected passengers — scientists, engineers, medical professionals, educators, and ecological specialists. Its mission is to travel between viable planetary systems, study potential resource-rich environments, and facilitate human settlements on an established secondary planet. While in transit, the ship operates as a complete living ecosystem with residential zones, research labs, marketplaces, food production systems, and internal transport networks, allowing life and work to continue seamlessly during long-duration space travel.
This is not a one-time evacuation craft, but the first of many long-range shuttles designed to transport skilled populations, analyze new worlds, and gradually build the infrastructure for a stable, multi-planetary human civilization.
Constraints set by the group
Why a human needs to pull it manually? — Mechanical override in case the system doesn’t react or detect the emergency fast enough or fails to operate.
Who has the power to activate it and why? — Anybody that witnesses the emergency but especially the supervisors of each department
Who holds the decision making power? — The supervisor of each department, the board of the trip and the captain in charge.
Is power centralized or decentralized ?— It is a centralized power grid.
When is activating the alarm allowed? Does the Alarm ever turn off? — When two people of authority have confirmed that there is a collision incoming
What are the risks? —
- Contagion/ explosives made by accident> biohazard
- Alarm for this one specific airborne virus. Has a very distinct
- Collision > room magnet stabilization
- Self diagnosis Alarm (when you detect a health hazard on yourself)
- Fire/ Collision/ Oxygen Depletion
- Person Missing
- Medical > Contagious diseases/ viruses
- Greenhouse crop contagion
- Collision to power area > Power outage > everything has to be manual and everything automatic is shut down
- Collision > alarm for the navigators to manually trigger when they will alert the rest of the spacecraft
- Magnet > alarm that triggers magnet stabilization?
- Contagion/ explosives made by accident > biohazard
Who is affected? — Depending on the severity of the medical emergency different people are contacted.
- Medical team vs. Whole spacecraft is alerted
- Everyone is very cooperative and they have little to no power in decision making.
- Collision > everyone
What are the severity levels of the risks?
(Emergency Language)
- White flashing lights (as a warning sign 1 hour prior to the collision)
- Red flashing lights (during the collision)
- Contagion: preferably small and compact
Collision: distinct/ large. can be accessed from every angle/ direction so its rotational?
1.Establishing the Emergency
Our brief introduced us to a speculative scenario: designing critical interaction systems for a habitable spacecraft. Divided into teams of five, our group — Adam, Selena, AC, Jack, and I — was assigned to the Habitable Spacecraft Unit. Over the first two weeks, we collectively defined our narrative world, established our emergency typologies, and divided the spacecraft into functional zones, each owned by one designer.
My zone: Food Production.
Rather than a collision-based emergency, my unit’s risk profile centered on operational failure and contagion hazard, a biohazard outbreak scenario that would trigger a full lockdown of the food production bay. The central narrative became this: upon activation of the mechanical override , the unit would enter isolation mode.
Interaction typology sketches — dialing, sliding, compound gestures — annotated for gesture affordance and emergency legibility.
2. Concept & Idea Development
Before touching foam or cardboard, I explored the interaction language of the mechanism itself. What does an emergency override feel like? What gestures communicate urgency and finality?
I developed multiple interaction typologies: dialing, sliding, pushing, pulling, multi-layered compound gestures (click + pull, rotate + push). Each was evaluated not just for usability, but for its ability to communicate weight and consequence — the way a pull of an emergency lever communicates more gravity than tapping a screen. I ultimately selected rotation paired with a pull motion , a two-handed gesture that demanded deliberate engagement.
This decision was informed early on by a key design reference: A Ray. Its wingspan, the way it spreads and retracts, the dual-symmetry of its motion — it mapped directly onto the bilateral pull gesture I was developing.
3. Prototype I: Foam Studies & Form Language
With the interaction gesture established, I moved into physical form-finding using three materials — Pink foam, grey foam, and foam board. Each prototype was deliberately distinct, testing different formal readings of the same gesture.
This phase was about bio-morphism, borrowing formal vocabulary from the natural world. I was specifically referencing eagle rays and stingrays over classic manta rays because of their more angular, structured wing geometry. Their streamlined, aerodynamic silhouettes became the formal grammar for my explorations.
The foam prototypes helped me confirm my earlier instinct: the literal manta ray pull motion two hands, symmetric, bilateral — read as the most legible and the most dramatic. It was the gesture that felt like an override.
4. Prototype II: Cardboard & Mechanical Hinge Exploration
Moving toward a scaled, wall-mounted prototype, I shifted to cardboard, not as a lesser material, but as one that introduced a valuable property: material flexibility. The cardboard’s inherent flex allowed me to simulate the wing-opening motion in a way foam could not.
Mounted at wall scale, this prototype gave me critical dimensional feedback. Was the sweep of the wings proportionate to the human body? Did the motion feel immersive at full scale?
Wall-mounted cardboard prototype at human scale — evaluating wingspan proportion, sweep arc, and spatial presence.
In parallel, I began deep research into mechanical hinge systems — sourcing references from Pinterest and McMaster-Carr, cataloguing hinge typologies: piano hinges, barrel hinges, friction hinges, living hinges. Napkin sketches became a running vocabulary of mechanical possibilities, each evaluated for how cleanly it could be disguised within the form while still enabling the desired arc of motion.
5. CAD Development: Form Refinement in Shapr3D
Transitioning into digital form-making, I worked through multiple side-view and top-view iterations in Shapr3D. This phase surfaced a critical tension I had to resolve: organic biomorphic form vs. 3D printability.
Early feedback from professors flagged that complex organic curves often result in degraded surface quality in FDM printing — layer artifacts, support scarring, and structural weak points. This pushed me toward more geometric, faceted forms. But purely geometric interpretations lost the aerodynamic fluidity that made the manta ray reference meaningful.
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My resolution: push the geometry until it implied organicism without fully committing to freeform surfaces. After several iterations, I arrived at a form I was genuinely satisfied with
6. Mechanical System: The Coarse-Circle Hinge
The first 3D-printed hinge iteration — a trial hole-based rotation mechanism — failed. It produced a click but lacked the structural integrity for the full rotational arc.
The solution I developed was a co-centric circle interaction — a system that fully disguised the hinge joint within the body of the form, allowing the wing to slide open along a concealed rotational axis. Key design requirements it had to satisfy:
- Printable in place — no assembly post-print
- Fully concealed — the mechanism should be invisible in closed state
- Internally hollow — housing for electronics (reed switch, magnet, LED components)
Draft CAD renders confirmed the approach had strong formal and mechanical coherence. The internal cavity was modeled with tailored dimensions: a through-cut for the reed switch, an enlarged radius bore for the magnet, and smooth hinge clearances tested iteratively.
7. 3D Printing: Material Selection & Iteration
Print 1 — PLA: The geometry printed cleanly. Surface quality was strong across all faces. However, the hinge, the most mechanically stressed point in the entire assembly, snapped under load. PLA’s brittleness was the failure.
PLA first print — clean geometry, failed hinge. Material brittleness as design constraint.
I noticed that my early iterations read more as the Batman symbol than a manta ray. The fix was counterintuitive but effective: I flipped the wing geometry, curving the leading edge upward. Immediately, the silhouette resolved into something unmistakably aquatic and alive.
Bottom surface detail — support scarring before and after repositioning on print bed.
Print 2 — Black Nylon (750CC filament): On the recommendation of a Cody a mentor, I switched to black nylon a material selected not only for its superior tensile strength and flexibility, but also for its aesthetic properties: a smooth, shiny finish with strong light-reflective qualities that read as inherently futuristic.
The nylon print vindicated the hinge design. The mechanism worked. The material captured and diffused light in exactly the way I’d hoped — a quality particularly relevant in a darkened spacecraft environment where black-on-black contrast becomes a spatial language.
The remaining craft challenge was the bottom surface finish — support contact points left scarring on the organic underside curves. I addressed this through repositioning the print orientation on the Bambu bed and adjusting support placement to minimize contact with visible surfaces
CAD cross-section showing internal cavity, reed switch through-cut, magnet housing, and hinge geometry.
Made adjustments and sent in a second print
- more tailored dimensions to fit electronics
- A through cut for the reed switch
- bigger radius to fit the magnet
- tailoring the hinge to move all the way smoothly
- Trying different support positions for the fins
Nylon final print — hinge intact, light-reflective finish, resolved wing silhouette.
8. Electronics Integration & Surface Treatment
With the mechanical system resolved, I turned to electronics integration. Components included:
- Reed switch — triggered by magnetic proximity upon override activation
- Neodymium magnet — embedded in the wing, aligning with the switch at closed position
[Both concealed with conductive black tape]
Internal electronics layout — reed switch, magnet placement, LED array, and acrylic diffuser panel.
- LED lighting — selected for high luminosity to ensure visibility in low-light spacecraft environments
- Laser-cut acrylic panels — 3mm translucent red sheet, used as a filtered lens
The LEDs were colored using red marker applied directly to the diffuser covers, layered with the red acrylic for a double-filtered warm light effect — producing a deep, urgent glow appropriate to an emergency interaction device. Epoxy and cyanoacrylate adhesive were used selectively: epoxy for structural bonds (magnet seating, acrylic mounting), superglue for component tacking.
AI render — product mounted in spacecraft food production unit, emergency activation state.
9. AI Renders & Application Visualization
Throughout the project, I used AI rendering to visualize the product in its intended context — mounted on a spacecraft interior wall, in the food production bay, surrounded by the material language of a speculative near-future environment. These renders served as alignment tools, helping me evaluate formal decisions (scale, proportion, finish) against environmental context before committing to physical iterations.
Caption: Full design board — 32 × 40 in., Adobe Illustrator. Design narrative from brief through final prototype.
10. Design Board: Communicating the Journey
For the final presentation, I produced a 32 × 40 inch design board in Adobe Illustrator — a document that synthesized the entire design journey: brief, research, interaction typology, prototyping progression, CAD development, material selection, and final product photography.
The board was structured to allow a viewer to read the design thinking, not just the outcome — showing the decisions, the failures, and the logic behind each pivot
Activated state — red-filtered LED glow through translucent acrylic. Emergency light behavior in simulated dark environment.
Reflection: What I Would Do Differently
Looking back, the project delivered on its core intent: a biomorphic, mechanically honest emergency override device that reads clearly as both an alerting alarm for the a habitable spacecraft int he future and a functional interaction object.
If I were to return to this project, my primary intervention would be on the bottom surface geometry of the form. The tension between organic curvature and printability was never fully resolved — it was managed. A more rigorous approach to DFM principles earlier in the CAD phase would allow the bottom profile to emerge from the print with the same surface quality as the upper faces, achieving a fully high-fidelity result across the entire object.
That said, the hinge works. The light glows red. The wings open like a ray. And for a sophomore, I’m really proud of the final outcome.
