We had the distinct pleasure to interview award winning designer Allan C.K. Chan about their original and creative Innovative Fitting System design work. Allan C.K. Chan is an award-winning industrial designer, that makes our world a better place with their original innovative fitting system works.
Allan C.K. Chan ("ACC") answered Design Interview ("DI") questions about their award-winning work i.Dummy Innovative Fitting System . Interview questions prepared by Frank Scott.
ACC : The i.Dummy project was conceived 5 years ago by Dr. Chan Chee Kooi, Allan of the Institute of Textiles & Clothing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. This was done as dummies are vitally used in the fashion industry for design and fitting and they are often available in single size and shape. Even when they are billed as a certain size, their shape and physical profiles can be variedly different. Coupled with various differences of many ethnicities, the finding of a dummy that can adequately represent the “person” has remains difficult.
ACC : The main focus is to design and develop a robotic mannequin that can mimic bodily profiles of different sizes of dummies for the global fashion industry.
ACC : The future plan is to propagate the technology and knowhow to other mannequin designs such as the male figure lower body, plus-sizes, and even children’s i.Dummies.
ACC : It was conceived years ago, but the parts were not suitable then. This successful invention saw light after 4 years of dedicated research.
ACC : It was in a pursuit of an inspiration and to prove the concept works. It worked!
ACC : The design is licensed for production and sales to a start-up company.
ACC : I have been a practitioner in the fashion industry for 30 years and I know many of the fixed sized dummies are not correct and costly too.
ACC : Not really.
ACC : The target customers are Designers, Buying Office, Trading Offices, Factories and Retailers, anyone working in the Fashion supply Chain who has to do apparel fitting.
ACC : It is totally adjustable, unlike those in the market which are fixed.
ACC : Various options came about, names mostly. However, since the mannequin is called “dummy” in the industry, naturally, the addition of an “i” will signify its “intelligence” and "interactiveness".
ACC : Solidworks and CAD software.
ACC : Despite its change in sizes, it still looks like the everyday lady?
ACC : Yes, skills in mechatronics and software programming
ACC : It drives dimension changes, produces panel designs that culminated into an invention of an entire new product.
ACC : Anthropometric studies and size systems of national standards, scanned images of 3D scanners bought from third party together with those from our 3D scanner laboratory
ACC : Getting the right person with the required expertise to work is most difficult, and once getting him, he may not know the ins and outs of the apparel industry in particular to the fit of clothing. The machining of mechanical parts is also challenging with countless modification along the way.
ACC : Good design has to be shared and made known to the world. An international design competition as a springboard can do this.
ACC : Concept is one thing, realization is another. There are many unseen or un-thought off problems that can happen now and then, so it was learning along the way. The experience is good and future work will be less troublesome, because the lessons learned becomes valuable.
ACC : Funding is an important element of any research. I got turned down a good number of times, even one cited, “it will never work”. He/she was wrong!
