Faab

An electrical charger that you can bring with you
Timeline | 1 week, spring 2020
Tools | Photoshop, Rhino and V-ray  
Background |  This project showcases a portable charger for electric cars. Electric car drivers connect this charger with a standard household plug.

The collaboration partners

Problem statement

How might we make charging stations for electric cars more portable?

Project goal

The personal aim is to meet the client's business requirements by designing a viable and appealing product. My process started with creating the product's internal parts to understand the relationship between form and function better.

Process
Design for production
Market research
Branding
design opportunities
Product's package and transport
Outdoor durability
Cable handling
Charging at public stations
FUnction follows form
I 3D-modeled the charger's PCB boards to better understand the charger's inner workings and restrictions regarding size and shape. This process gave me a good idea about possible forms for the electric charger.
Moodboard
Durable
Inviting
Sustainable
FORM EXPLORATIONS
I made form explorations and iterations in CAD to see various perspectives of the electric charger. The 3D visuals helped me to harmonize the inner components with the form.
detailing out
In the next iterations, the form got detailed out, for example, through the addition of a heat-reducing surface.

Furthermore, I explored various placements of the  charging handle and and plug in order to find best cable handling for the user.
Challenges

Result

The biggest challenge was to meet the client's business requirements (for example, considering technical limitations and sizes of components),  while finding ways to make the product useful and usable through the lens of user-centered design.

Faab charger is a portable electrical charger that converts electric vehicle electricity into household-plug friendly electricity. Due to the charger's small size and standard plug, the user enjoys high flexibility in choosing where and when the user wants to charge the car. There is no need to put up a transformer on the wall at home anymore.