Background
Gisler was approached by one of the Australian distributors for Philips Electronics, to investigate the possibility of locally manufacturing a headphone listening station. The unit is an upmarket Point of Purchase stand used to display Philips Electronics headphones. Feedback from store owners indicated that the existing Philips Headphone Tower design had to be modified to especially prevent theft of sample headphones.
After discussing the client brief, Gisler Design was given the task of addressing the new design requirements, thereby helping Gisler Display to quickly proceed with the project. Prototyping and manufacturing lead times set by the client were tight, as the rollout of the units had to happen in time for the end of year Christmas season.
Design Requirements
Gisler Design had to follow the look of an existing unit as close as possible, while adding functionality such as:
- Security solution for headphones to prevent in-store theft of expensive headphones.
- Eliminating the need for store owners to manually feed headphone cables through the headphone tower to plug into an audio splitter box in the unit’s base.
Formalising the Design
Gisler Design first had a meeting involving designers, materials purchasing and production staff. The original sample unit was examined whereafter decisions were made on the material and fabrication processes to be used for the new unit. Some slight changes were made in part and subassembly construction, in order to come up with a cost effective design that would closely follow the look of the original design and suit Gisler manufacturing processes.
Changes made to the unit included:
- A metal base was designed to accommodate lighting and audio components; this replaced the existing timber base.
- In order to prevent headphone theft, a headphone holder mechanism was designed that would make it very hard for someone to steal a headphone without being noticed.
- Panel mounted headphone jacks were added on the outside of the unit, enabling store owners to easily plug the headphones in. The headphone cables previously had to be fed through the inside of the unit to an audio splitter at the bottom, a task that wasn’t popular with store owners.
3D CAD Design
A detailed 3D CAD solid model of the unit including all parts (metal, acrylic, electric) was created using Pro/Engineer. This enabled the designer to visually check the interaction of all parts and to make sure everything fit and look as intended right from the start. Manufacturing drawings were then generated to be used for the first prototype.
Prototyping
By having a complete set of manufacturing drawings available with a detailed Bill of Materials, prototyping time was reduced. Most of the design work was completed in the CAD stage, making it a matter of assembling the manufactured components. The client was very happy with the solutions demonstrated and placed an order for the first production run.
Large Scale Production
The design documentation and drawings used for the prototype was basically ready to be used for large scale production as soon as the order was placed. This helped to get the final product into stores in time. By having detailed documentation available for all metal, acrylic, lighting and audio components, Gisler Design helped the Gisler production staff to accurately manufacture the production units to match the design specifications.
Conclusion
The Philips Headphone Tower project was a typical design and engineering exercise that lived up to and exceeded the client’s expectations in its look, functionality and return on investment.
As a dedicated product design studio, Gisler Design is geared to take existing or new product design ideas from concept to reality, using state of the art design tools and processes. Clients can make use of some or all of Gisler Design’s services according to their specific needs, wether it involves the complete product lifecycle or parts of it.
