DI: What is the main principle, idea and inspiration behind your design?
RMP : The creation of the MoovBox comes from a very simple reason: the passion for music. What Francesco Mammetti, Gilles Traditi and I were looking for was a way that could be able to model the music tracks in the most intuitive and personal approach as possible.
DI: What has been your main focus in designing this work? Especially what did you want to achieve?
RMP : Our main goal was to create a multimedia device that would work in synergy with the smartphone and that, on the one hand, could replace the now too common touchscreen in the interaction for musical composition, and on the other hand, could resume the concept of the synthesizer, in our case portable, introduced in 1962 by Robert Moog.
DI: What are your future plans for this award winning design?
RMP : The MoovBox leaves sufficient amount of room for an intervention of engineering in order to trasform the concept in a real product. We believe that the award coud be a great business card for a possible contact with companies or even for a crowdfounding platform.
DI: How long did it take you to design this particular concept?
RMP : The MoovBox is a project presented at the seventh edition of the Samsung Young Design Award. From a purely embryonic level, in a few months we were up to develop a convincing form of the product and to align all his functions. Since that time, we needed some several months to develop the communication and prototype for the degree thesis.
DI: Why did you design this particular concept? Was this design commissioned or did you decide to pursuit an inspiration?
RMP : The MooBox was born from our desire to participate in the Samsung Young Design Award responding to the proposed theme (Electronics for urban mobility) in a really non-conformist way.
DI: Is your design being produced or used by another company, or do you plan to sell or lease the production rights or do you intent to produce your work yourself?
RMP : The MoovBox is now a project with ample space for improvement. Samsung Electronics Italia has made a formal model of the project to exhibit during the event of the competition and to bring out our idea. From our personal experience, the MoovBox achieves resounding success and we would be delighted both in selling the copyrights and in keep on working to make it on our own.
DI: What made you design this particular type of work?
RMP : Our team has a deep knowledge of musical instruments. This knowledge, linked with our preparation in industrial design and product allowed us to sum up in a single device all the features that make the MoovBox a very innovative project. We also realized that we could take advantage of a tool as powerful as the smartphone to completely eliminate a number of useless settings from the interface of our project.
DI: Where there any other designs and/or designers that helped the influence the design of your work?
RMP : The Moog Modular was a great inspiration for us. we were fascinated by the idea of being able to distort sounds that, until then, was impossible to create with other musical instruments. With as much attention we have studied the historical importance of the Walkman and the revolution that brought to the way we enjoy music.
DI: Who is the target customer for his design?
RMP : Initially the target of MoovBox were commuters since the project was configured and configure yet as synthesizer-stress. We then realized that the device was going to meet a much wider user as commuters are an extremely heterogeneous category. Ours is a project that fascinates above all music lovers such as electronics but also teenagers, professionals and many others.
DI: What sets this design apart from other similar or resembling concepts?
RMP : We think our project is unique because the interaction with the device changes with the needs of the user. The unrepeatable sounds created, listened and shared via the smartphone MoovBox make a unique medium.
DI: How did you come up with the name for this design? What does it mean?
RMP : The name of MoovBox comes from the desire to combine the words "Moog" and "move" to reconnect to the idea of the synthesizer and the scope of mobility. Instead, the suffix "box" is used to indicate the device's ability to contain a number of musical instruments and unlimited possibilities.
DI: Which design tools did you use when you were working on this project?
RMP : The design of our project has gone through the program of parametric modeling Autodesk Inventor Professional, which has allowed us to experiment freely on preliminary forms of the model. One advanced idea was then worked on Rhinoceros to work faster on surfaces and small details. All this, finally, was rendered thanks to Keyshot and paginated with Adobe Illustrator. Instead, the study model has been realized in high density polyurethane foam and milled by a numerical control milling machine, and then painted with white stucco spry.
DI: What is the most unique aspect of your design?
RMP : The unique aspect of our project is the ability to distort the devices and simultaneously cause a distortion in the music we listen to. Furthermore, the shape and the features within the MoovBox are designed to fit the instrument selected by the user.
DI: Who did you collaborate with for this design? Did you work with people with technical / specialized skills?
RMP : In addition to my colleagues Francesco Mammetti and Gilles Traditi, the project was supported by the guidance and advices of Professors from the ISIA in Rome Carlo di Pascasio, Mauro Palatucci and Lorena Luzzi.
DI: What is the role of technology in this particular design?
RMP : The role of technology in our project is definitely primary. In the realization of our concept we took into account many factors such as the possibility of connection between two devices offered by today's technologies, the possibility of using sensors inside a main body made of silicon and the relationship between a digital and an analog interface.
DI: Is your design influenced by data or analytical research in any way? What kind of research did you conduct for making this design?
RMP : For the realization of the forms and the interaction we have used our experience in the field of music and we confronted with industry professionals. We have also benefited from the interviews conducted and addressed to experts like Stefano Giovannoni, Chris Bangle, Frieda Brioschi and Francesco Morace on the theme of urban mobility and the role of technology in today's society.
DI: What are some of the challenges you faced during the design/realization of your concept?
RMP : As in all projects carried out by a team, the first challenge was definitely to find a solution that would give satisfaction and meeting the requirements of everyone. Subsequently, the more effort have been to finish a complete concept in all its parts in the short time available to us to clarify all possible interactions with our project.
DI: How did you decide to submit your design to an international design competition?
RMP : We decided to sign up with our project to an international design competition because we got a very positive feedback in Italy with the Samsung Young Design Award, winning the prize for best thesis category environmental & Urban Design of the Lucky Strike Talented Designer Award instituted by Raymond Loewy Foundation, and we'd like tounderstand how a project like MoovBox could be accommodated in a wider context.
DI: What did you learn or how did you improve yourself during the designing of this work?
RMP : What we have learned is that when a project is considered finished it’s precisely the time in which we have to improve our skills to bring out our idea making it unique to the public eyes.
