#200420 BRAND90 Comfort Shoe
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March 2020 -December 2020
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Xiaomi/Brand 90
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Short term contract onsite design work
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To provide product insight and lead in design 2 collections of casual athleisure footwear.
The idea of this design project is to create footwear styles that is comfort enough to be worn and commute between office and home during winter season. This shoe has to be solid enough to be worn in snow and extreme weather condition, especially in northern China region. Yet it is comfort to be able to lounge around once in the office.
I focused on casual athleisure of clean aesthetics, but the tooling has to be designed with outdoor condition in mind. I put together 2 different concepts of 2 different tooling aesthetics. Eventually I went forth on the one with smaller less aggressive one.
Another fun fact is that this entire design project is done in an old fashion analog style. I ditched the digital content completely. There is no CADs, no excel specification sheets. Also I did the entire design in a hotel during my seasonal factory development trip.
The idea of using an elastic neoprene type of material which is Collapsible. The heel is raised to be worn outdoor as a shoe. The heel is collapsed when worn indoor as sandals for maximum comfort and breathability.
Materials used on this style is one major point of interest. My idea was to combine indoor slipper comfort with outdoor footwear roughness.
Since these styles are being designed to be worn indoor use, I focused on what to be used inside of this shoe. The interior (lining) of upper is a thick layer of shearing and the exterior of upper is a thinner layer of weather resistant material.
Basically I showed development team drawings and explained the construction. There is a little miscommunication during the development. The new tooling is one size smaller than the last size used.
The outsole design is a bit aggressive on this one. All the straight lines and sharpe edges are too rough for indoor use. And most silhouettes in this direction are too outdoor-ish. The entire aesthetic of this design direction was just too aggressive for indoor use.
