Problem: USB flash drives are easy to misplace.
I was inspired to design a USB flash drive that is hard to lose when I lost mine. It’s small size made it highly portable but also very easy to lose track of. I use to never have it on me because I would always leave it behind. When I finally lost it, I lost all my important files.
When I went to the library to look for my USB drive, I found a box full of USB drives that other people lost and never found. Preventing misplacement was clearly a design problem in need of a solution.
User Survey
I conducted a survey to college students and working professionals to get a sense of the problem. I discovered that the majority of users have experience losing their USB drive and forget them more than often.
Adjacent Product Research
Before looking at competitions, I drew upon other examples of product design for inspiration. I was particularly drawn to the idea of the clip and how they attach allow attachment to other objects to prevent misplacement.
Competition Analysis
Although portable flash storage is a saturated market with many players, almost every product competes on capacity, size, and appearance. Because they have become so small, they have also become easier objects to lose. However, there was no product in the market that was designed to help users to not misplace their investment.
The products fall in two categories: tech gadget and accessory + toy. The meaning these products communicate to people determine which they fell into.
Insights
Strategy : Shift the Meaning
Instead of competing in predefined category, I saw the opportunity to shift the meaning of USB drives away from a gadget or an accessory into something more useful, timeless and essential. The new category was inspired by my research into adjacent stationery products that have been refined over many years to reach their maturity in aesthetics and functionality. This strategy to shift what a USB drive means to people informed the design phase of my creative process.
Mind Map
After what I learned from my research, I mapped out every aspect of the product I wanted to achieve through its design.
The Aesthetic Direction
I’ve always admired the essentialist design of the paper clip. My goal with the design of this product was to approach the level of refinement and timelessness of the paper clip.
Form Exploration
I started with very rough sketches of different forms that incorporate a clip into the form. After many more iterations, I narrowed down all the ideas into two different concepts.
The first iteration integrated the clip directly into the body. However, there needed to be a way to protect the plug when not in use. Also, the clip was adding thickness to the drive.
The second iteration placed a plastic core inside a metal enclosure that slides in and out. This makes the manufacturing simpler while reducing the thickness. Lastly, the plug would be protected when not in use.
The Line-up
The design phase yielded two promising directions for the final product. At first I tried to pick one from the two, but they were both compelling in their own way. So I decided to design a line of two products.
Concept A : Pen Clip Type
Concept B : Money Clip Type
Computer Aided Design
I constructed the CAD model in Rhinoceros. The final geometry was a combination of fillets for folded aluminum and chamfers for injection molded plastic core.
I really enjoyed the process of defining every aspect of the idea I had sketched in the design phase.
Branding
The name of the brand came from a coincidental discovery I made. The corrugated surface sliding up and down reminded me of the escalators in metropolitan subway stations. So I decided to name the product “Metro” to communicate the classy aesthetic I was striving for since the beginning.
To design the logo for the brand, I turned to the industrial design. I identified the clip and the folded metal characteristic as the defining feature of the Metro brand. I wanted the logo to communicate the two brand equities visually.
The final logo was rendered from a 3D geometry to give it depth.
I also made sure the logo looked good in black and white.
In this way, when the logo is applied to the product, it remains subdued and unobtrusive.
Color + Material + Finish
While the material was chosen from the beginning as folded sheet metal, the inherent modularity of Metro lent itself to multiple color choices even after purchasing the product. I explored many different options for coloring the metal jacket.
I chose more subdued colors in the end because I felt they fit better with the overall aesthetics and brand narrative of the product. If this were to be a real product, I could see a personalization system or using colors as means of labeling different drives one person might carry.
Delivery
Metro was actually designed as an entry for a design competition organized by a Korean USB drive manufacturer. Because it was for a real company, I assumed that they would be looking for a feasible yet marketable design. I didn’t win the competition but I would be curious to find out which design they ended up picking.
Personally, I was very satisfied with this exercise because I felt that I had realized my personal goal of designing a timeless and functional product for a saturated market that’s filled with cheap gadgety and cheesy products. A clip is really a small feature that I didn’t find a good implementation. It’s never going to save the world, but it just might save your valuable data.
