The prototyping process began in our brainstorming meeting, where we all sat together and listed our prototype ideas. After an hour and a half or so of deliberation and discussion, we found ourselves all agreeing to Emilyne's idea for a box divider accessory.

Despite a long discussion and several rounds of explanation, many of our team members were still confused by Emilyne's product idea and the exact mechanisms. Thankfully, Emilyne quickly put together a prototype during our meeting using scissors and tissue box cardboard. With this simple, rudementary prototype, our entire team was able to understand the basis of her idea and were then able to contribute their own suggestions to said model.

We thought that Emilyne's first prototype was sufficient for our needs, as the most important part we needed to communicate were the dimensions and the X shape inserts but after a day we realized that the material we had used was far from optimal. Emilyne notified us that our prototype was falling apart and it likely would not hold it's structure very well in time for the presentation, so we had to create a new prototype.

Since our biggest issue was the material that we used, we decided that for our second prototype, we would focus on changing the material. Since we were still in the early prototyping stages, we didn't have access to very sturdy materials so we stayed with the early idea of cardboard. Emilyne was able to find a much sturdier cardboard that had inner layers and a protective coat. With this material, the inserts were much sturdier and easier to handle.

In our prototype presentation, we demonstrated how our product fit inside the box and the usage of the X shaped inserts. With this modified first prototype, we were able to display the structural integrity of the Paxsafe. However, some points we could improve on is our voice volume and how we demonstrated the way our product can fit in any size dimension.

With the critique from our last presentation, the team now had to move forward and decide which focus points to address in our usability test. We agreed that many viewers commented that they were confused about how SafePax inserts were modular and could fit in any box, and people wanted more explanation about the material that we would use for both the inserts themselves and the safety padding. It was interesting to see that most of the critique centered around confusion about certain features rather than faults in the features themselves, so we decided that we would focus on clarification and the flexbility of the product.

Now that we had the critique to guide our usability test, the team decided to focus on 3 points: ease of assembly and use, whether or not our design answers our HMW statement, and the impact of our safety padding feature. We wanted our users to naturally interact with our prototype, without knowing these 3 items on our testing agenda, so we only asked the testers to pack a few items we provided and ask them guided questions afterward.

We received very valuable critique from our usability tests. Many users found it very confusing on how to assemble, place, and use the inserts. We decided to color code the slits and edges that corresponded to each other so that it was easier to orient and fit the inserts together. From the Zoom meeting we had in class with Zahin Ali, our team decided that we could make the inserts even more modular by allowing users to not only connect inserts left and right, but also top and bottom so that users can expand the partitioning in all directions. Furthermore, we began to explore ideas of designing a box that allows the inserts to lock in place along the edges so that they don't move as much.

For our next prototype, we decided to precisely laser cut sturdy cardboard in order to improve the visual aesthetics and usability of our prototype while also keeping costs low. Nina worked on several Illustrator files to cut out inserts of varying sizes and safety padding designs so that we can receive more critique on which designs user's preferred.

Our laser cut design had several design flaws, especially relating to the safety padding feature. The cut out shapes were not very effective in creating padding and were actually taking up a lot necessary space for users to store items. Furthermore, we had miscalculated the location of the middle slit, thus the laser cut inserts wouldn't work at all. Once again, we had to brainstorm new ideas.

We consulted Professor Au and Effie about the design for our safety padding feature and introduced some of our brainstormed ideas. We were thinking of using a recyclable foam plastic, but the issue with this was that users might not be able to recycle the the inserts and the padding together due to varying recycling standards. Effie suggested that we stick with the idea of 100% reusable cardboard by making the padding out of corrugated cardboard. We thought this was a good idea, as corrugated cardboard is a standard padding material, it was cheap, and it made our insert material 100% cardboard.

Emilyne created the first inserts with the corrugated cardboard and sized up the proportions so that it would fit optimally in a standard moving box. Once she presented it to the rest of the team, we discussed color coding the slits and notches so that users could understand how the pieces fit together better. Then, we created multiple pairs of inserts, rather than just the one, so that we could present its assembly and modularity in future showcases.