Cole Chalhub

Undergraduate

As a designer, one of my strongest skills is my ability to research and understand any topic or problem that is placed in front of me. Whether I am interviewing customers to identify their needs or learning a new programming language to understand the development of an app I am designing, I am driven by curiosity to fully understand the problems I am trying to solve. I believe that research is the most important step of product design because it does not matter how beautiful a final product is if it is not a product the customer wants or needs. My passions lie at the intersection of technology and user-centered design. I am passionate about user-centered design because it challenges me to constantly empathize with people and use design thinking to find practical solutions to their problems. I believe that good design can completely change our perspective of daily interactions and I hope to use my skills to create meaningful experiences that make the world a more enjoyable place.
 

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A render of a flip-open desk lamp, with another render showing different coloration options.

CleanLight

CleanLight

Class: ID 2024  |  Instructor: Kimberly Snyder

CleanLight is a UV light desk lamp designed to help college students sanitize their belongings faster and more efficiently. When interviewing college students, I discovered many students felt that they got sick more often in college than during other points in their life. This is due to the fact that many college students live in communal style living and are constantly exposed to new people and places. Additionally, students do not have the money, storage space, or time to stock up on cleaning supplies and clean. CleanLight aims to solve these problems by using UV light as a sanitation method. UV light can kill up to 95% of bacteria and viruses in minutes and, as technology improves, it is starting to be used more frequently in home devices. With CleanLight college students can turn on the UV setting and allow the light to kill any harmful bacteria on their devices or in the surrounding workspace. When the area is clean, the user simply switches to the study light and begins working. CleanLight can also be removed from its stand and used as a sanitation wand or it can be folded into a compact and carried in a bag to any desired study space.

A promotional screen depicting an app.

Nibble

Nibble

Nibble is a digital menu service that allows customers to view a restaurant’s menu on their smart phone instead of using a paper menu. Paper restaurant menus are a dated concept that cost restaurants thousands of dollars a year, harm the environment, and are some of the dirtiest items in a restaurant. Often times menus are touched by hundreds of people a week without being cleaned. However, Nibble does not just provide restaurant customers a way to avoid germs and sickness. While creating a digital menu I was able to design a product that could help revolutionize the dining experience. Nibble allows customers to label their menu based on their personal dietary restrictions and easily leave live feedback for the restaurant by rating their dining experience. Restaurants can use the feedback to better understand their customers and improve their services in the future. Traditional menus are a thing of the past and Nibble can help revolutionize the dining experience one restaurant at a time.

Two renders of a lamp composed of stacked cube.

Rustic Shades

Rustic Shades

Class: ID 2024  |  Instructor: Kimberly Snyder

Rustic Shades is a decorative furniture piece designed for a modern, barn-style home. This lamp is by far the largest product I have ever designed and one of my first pieces designed for a specific location. For these reasons, it was important to me to draw inspiration from the selected environment and work hard to ensure that the final model fit nicely in it. When designing this six-foot tall lamp, I truly learned the value of making full-scale prototypes before pouring time and money into a final model. Sometimes small details in a sketch or even a ¼ scale model do not translate nicely when they are ten times larger. Rustic Shades is both modern in its geometric form and rustic in the use of textured fabric and dark walnut wood. The warm light, soothing colors, and interesting body language make Rustic Shades the perfect accent piece for comfortable home office.