Process

Starting off this project, I thought about some problems I face, and one was how my lanyard gets tangled easily when I put it inside my pocket. I realized that by making it out of cardboard, it couldn't tangle the same way, while still being convenient to pull out and scan.I approached it from more of a 2D perspective rather than thinking about 3D form and wearability. The first problem I ran into was that when I made a 2D cutout of the lanyard, it was pretty stiff and not very wearable. So I sketched up a new version that was more practical: I used a scoring technique to make the cardboard flexible so it could imitate a rope-like object, which worked really well.

To create a disconnect and connector piece, I attached a single piece of cardboard, then made a slot so it could go in and out efficiently. A second problem I faced was how to attach the "rope" to the cardboard. At first I planned to superglue it, but I realized the glue would block the actual slot the card needed to slide into. So instead, I made a slit inside the rope to thread the holder through, and that worked very effectively.

For the card holder itself, I used a layering technique, stacking two pieces of cardboard on top of each other to create a thin opening inside. I carved out a section for the barcode to be scanned (which actually scans effectively) and a spot for the overall ID to be visible.