The brief for this project outlined the creation of hand-held device that enhances the experience of a chosen user group - our team chose musicians for our targeted user group, as all team members played instruments and had experienced similar issues when practicing. However, we did not let this previous knowledge of the target market influence our research - we conducted interviews with professional musicians and studio producers to get a wide range of insights. Our research and needfinding directed us towards improving the time-keeping experience across all skill levels of musicians, as we discovered friction points with current metronomes for learners as well as professionals.

As well as meeting a number of product compliance standards, the device had to be optimised for manufacture and assembly (DFM/A), in order to both reduce manufacturing costs and the environmental impact of the device. A high priority was placed on inserting the device into the product line-up of a current company, and so branding and marketing were important to ensure that the created device reached a wide an audience as possible.

The outcome was the EDM 120 - the result of 4 months of research, detailed DFM/A with fatigue and stress analysis, prototyping and component load calculations. Human-centred design aspects included UI and UX design, packaging design and experience and CASIO brand development. Having completed the project, we sent the full portfolio and video to a number of users to get their honest feedback, and were excited to see that our user group responded overwhelmingly positively to our work. We also considered the constructive criticism and adapted a number of features as a result. A few examples of feedback is displayed at the bottom of the page and a number of the previously mentioned aspects are detailed below. The full document can be viewed as a PDF above.