Please tell us about your work

Gaurav Genani, has been working on his graduation project as a Master’s student at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at TU Delft, netherlands. We play in a band together and he’s one hell of a guitarist. I was very intrigued by his topic of his graduation project. I hope you guys will find it exciting too!

What did you study?

I did my bachelors (Mechanical engineering) from NIT, Suratkal and currently doing my MSc Integrated Product Design from Delft University of Technology

So is it a graduation project or a thesis?

So how it works is that in the Industrial Design Engineering Master Program there are 4 semesters and each semester is worth thirty credits. So the final semester consists of a graduation project worth 30 credits. So strictly speaking, it’s not a thesis. But all other faculties here have theses and Industrial Design has a graduation project. So the graduation project will prove if you are capable and ‘good enough’ to graduate, like a thesis.

So what’s the graduation project like?

There are 3 main fields: Strategic Product Design, Design for Interaction and Integrated Product Design. These three different fields have their own demands. My field is Integrated Product Design and I have to demonstrate, through my product, how the user perceives what works and what doesn’t in it.

 What’s YOUR graduation project about?

My graduation project deals with ergonomics of electric guitars. I’m part of the ergonomics group so my graduation project should somehow deal with ergonomics. So, I’m a guitarist and I wanted to bring that into my work. I wanted to explore the injuries and the strains that revolve around guitarists.

 It’s like your integrating your creative passion with your work.

Yes, I’m a guitarist so the analysis was somewhat done in my head already. Sometimes students get attached to projects that are completely new for them like sustainability and they have to go through the initial phase of getting used to the project. I could somewhat go past that since I have an understanding of the subject. It allowed me to go into deeper analysis of the project.

 So what’s the product you’re working on?

I wanted to explore how you attach the instrument to your body. The most common and pretty much the only way for electric guitars is a strap around the neck. But this has a lot of biomechanical problems. But as I’ve found, it also turns out that you can attach it to your waist as well. So I’ve made a belt and I’m thinking of an attachment to fasten the guitar to the belt. So the link is based on zero-gravity tool holders which are used in assembly lines. So due to that principle you don’t need to use much body strength to hold it. From a musician’s perspective, the neutral position should not require strain on any extra muscles. So the guitar should remain in position without using extra force.  I’m currently working on building it here using aluminium and steel brackets and springs. That’s themain idea.

 So what’s next?

After building the prototype, I’ll be reviewed in a ‘Greenlight’ meeting. It’s a no go sort of a thing where it will be decided if I’m on the right track to graduating.