Need Identification

Job shops (think of machine shops, automotive shops, essentially all trade-based job shops, and even hobbyists' garages) require tools, materials, and resources that take up a lot of space. These shops constantly collect tools and quickly run out of storage for many of them, we hope to solve this issue.

Our team is made of engineers and we are all too used to the common problems that come with storage in a shop environment. We wanted to focus on storage innovation since the area is often overlooked in design and we have all wanted a better solution ourselves. We talked with several tradespeople, from general contractors to mechanics to shop managers, and found that people working in a shop environment have a genuine issue with the lack of organized storage space. 

Here are the people we interviewed, and their roles as tradespeople:

• Jennifer Boggs, ITLL machine shop co-manager

• Mark Eaton, ITLL wood shop co-manager

• Bryce Anderson, hobbyist mechanic

• Catherine Crichton, hobbyist mechanic

• Ed Ehrlich, retired mechanic

• Eric Linden, general contractor

• Chad Littell, general contractor

Because of this need for organized storage space, we decided to focus on the user group of people working in job shops, specifically job shop managers. Shop managers typically work to improve the efficiency of space and increase the number of tools they have for solving problems. From our interviews, we also found that high-up space was often under-utilized due to safety and efficiency. The following pain points have been developed from a user point-of-view (POV).

• Storage space is hard to find

• Storage in high-up places is difficult, dangerous, and timely to access

• Organization is difficult to maintain

• Existing solutions are too costly and large-scale

From these pain points and other comments in our interviews, we created our design criteria to solve these issues. 

Although similar products exist, none are focused on small to medium-sized job shops, leaving a huge market for innovation in storage solutions.

Throughout the semester we will need to communicate with our users to conduct interviews and get feedback on our concepts. In our case this shouldn't be any trouble as all of our interviewees agreed to talk at a later point if necessary and there are many more job shops we have not yet reached out to in the Denver-Boulder area.