Industrial Design Capacity Building

Greetings from the Canberra Innovation Network where Ashley Marsh-Croft is running an Industrial Design Capacity Building and PVP Info Session. There is about $100,000 available in vouchers for startups to get help with their prototypes. This is about physical prototypes, not software, or services.

Inserting microphone into soft toy,
Photo by Tom Worthington, CC-BY 2022

The example I chose was a throwable microphone. These are available, but are not cheap and are so heavy I would not want one thrown at me. So I went out and got some stuffed toys with zips in them. Could this be improved on as a product? As an example, how heavy does it need to be to be easily throwable, but not dangerous. Would it be better rugby football shaped, rather the a cube or a ball, as many are? Adults seem to react well to a cartoon face on the microphone, will this help them orientate the unit?

Chat GPT generated image of a
teacher throwing a microphone. 

Copilot generated image of a
teacher throwing a microphone. 

I asked Chat GPT and Microsoft Copilot to "draw a throwable microphone shaped like a football being used in an australian classroom". They produced remarkably similar results, both with a female teacher and three students.  Chat GPT had a microphone end to the football. 

Some questions this brought up were if the microphone could be made of molded foam with no cover. This would be much cheaper, down to the point of being disposable (recyclable?).