For my senior project, I was part of the Maestro team consisting of four other mechanical engineering students and two art students. Working with SONOS, the team was given $5000 to design personal audio systems. The process started with understanding the company's design language, as seen by the image on the right of the team dissecting current SONOS products. This transitioned into competitor analysis, where the team analyzed the dimensions, material choice, and features of other products that were currently available. After conducting user interviews and surveys, the team gained an understanding of what customers prioritized and was able to use this information to influence initial designs.
As the rapid prototyping stage began, this required a constant collaboration between the mechanical and industrial design teams: the product had to be feasible to manufacture while meeting the visual expectations set by SONOS. Following numerous iterations on both SolidWorks and 3D printed models, the team narrowed down the designs to two ideas, ranging from wild to mild. The former pushed the limits of the competitor products in hopes of reaching a new audience, symbolizing the collaboration of creativity and performance. The latter followed a more familiar look with the added element of class expected from the company, targeting the existing customer base. These concepts were then brought to life in the machine shop as seen in the images on the left. My machining expertise allowed me to tackle the easier cuts with manual mills and shears, and I was able to write G-code to handle some of the more complex geometries. Once this was complete, the parts were rolled to a specific curvature and heat treated based on data in the Machinery's Handbook to achieve a desirable stiffness and yield strength. The same part was manufactured using 1050 spring steel and 1095 spring steel for their elastic properties and 6061 aluminum for its low mass.
All of the parts were brought to UCSB's testing facility and secured onto a MTS 810 machine. As the parts experienced up to 170N of force, their load-displacement data were recorded to reveal material properties. This included the identification of when warping would occur and whether this number was much greater than expected to avoid failure with typical usage. The experimental data was then plotted against FEA simulations done on the CAD models to ensure that the test results were sound, helping the team move on with 1050 spring steel when manufacturing the final product.
Unlike some of the other capstone teams that were exclusively engineering oriented, our team included art students and an industrial design lead from SONOS. This allowed me to learn more about the artistic side of product generation: I was able to conduct trend research and participate in ID meetings to understand how they considered factors like ergonomics and appearance into their design reasoning. Through this project I got to work with software like Miro and Figma, as well as design tools like 2x2 matrices and Pugh charts. In addition, I got to contribute to the project's branding, which included logo creation and a promotional video that highlighted the products' features, as seen in the renderings on the left.
While the exact details of this project cannot be shared, the work done by our team paved the path for SONOS's first headphone product. More details about the SONOS Ace can be found here: https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/sonos-ace-black