Product Development Support from Design Concepts Inc.
Helps Spacesaver Earn "Best of NeoCon" Gold Award. ///
Spacesaver's New Designer Series Mobile Storage
Systems Also Earn Approval from Architects and Interior Designers
(Madison, Wis.) - Design Concepts, Inc. (DCI), a leading provider of outsourced
product development services for manufacturers, today announced that the
contributions from its team to a new product series for Spacesaver Corporation
helped to capture the 2002 "Best of NeoCon" Gold Award at the recent NeoCon
World's Trade Fair held in Chicago June 10-12 at Chicago's Merchandise Mart.
The award-winning product is Spacesaver's New Designer Series, which offers
architects and designers a multitude of aesthetic options for high-density
mobile storage systems. By making all visible aspects of mobile storage systems
aesthetically refined and customizable, these systems are now transformed into
showroom-quality furniture. Honoring the most outstanding products from the
contract furnishings industry, the annual NeoCon Awards Program is sponsored
by Facilities Design & Management magazine, Contract magazine and the International
Interior Design Association, and draws over 240 entries. The NeoCon World's Trade
Fair is the foremost educational conference for the interior design and facilities
management industries.
"It was a real privilege to work with the professionals at Design Concepts for this
project," explained Spacesaver's Director of Marketing Christopher Batterman.
"They got up-to-speed very quickly, they enthusiastically offered and explored a
wide variety of ideas, and as we proceeded through the decision-making process,
they did everything possible to deliver highly aesthetic designs for our product
that also addressed input from our targeted end-users."
Project Approach
For this project, industrial designer Cory Boudreau served as DCI's project manager.
"Our team was asked to create a storage system that appealed to the aesthetic needs
of architects and designers, while preserving the flexibility and ease of use end
users demand," he explained.
From there, Boudreau described several brainstorming sessions with Spacesaver's team
that produced some 150 sketches. The ten best ideas were then identified and reviewed
for materials and manufacturing concerns. Using Spacesaver's CAD data, Design Concepts
was quickly able to illustrate their new ideas, and through numerous reviews the process
then moved forward with the most viable designs.
"Our designs benefit from our team's diverse backgrounds and our product development
experience across many industries," Boudreau said. "An example of how this applied to
the Designer Series project was in our design for an innovative handle that 'floats'
inside the panels - and in the development of a layered system of panels that enables
the system to be highly customizable.
"Also," Boudreau concluded, "much of the success of this project comes from the collection
and inclusion of input from architects and designers in the design process. By identifying
and addressing their needs early in the program and reviewing our work with them throughout
the design process, we were able to deliver a design that is ultimately much more useful."
Spacesaver Mobile Storage System Product Detail ///
