I remember my first encounter with the concept of measuring. In 2012, at design school, we were asked to describe the function of a randomly selected object in depth. I chose to analyze the laundry basket. This ordinary object appears to have daily interaction with its user. It’s made of precisely selected materials to allow the odors to breathe, and its size is generally closet-friendly. It works as a storage artifact, and, of course, it functions as a measuring object.
The laundry basket measures the quantity of dirty clothes. It signals the necessity of clean clothes and the action of washing. This measuring tool artifact is essential for the user to achieve clothing, an indispensable social activity. Of course, there are other means of indicators — like the lack of clean clothes, but anyway.
This little existential crisis towards ordinary objects/tools we depend on to complete everyday tasks made me wonder how we rely on measuring activities to understand our reality. The intensity of the sound of an old hinge says that the door is about to fall, the color of menstrual blood informs our health, an almost empty refrigerator notifies grocery shopping, the changing shape of a toothbrush bristle announces the user a new purchase — not the three months the dentist suggests, and so on.
We calibrate personal values, create their variables, and measure them daily to keep order and control our reality’s natural, non-static state.
The Remote Lab
In 2021, one of my master’s remote seminars made me create a dynamometer, an object specifically designed to measure, which was a total failure. However, understanding the whole process of fabricating, building, and processing this device allowed me to explore the concepts and practices of measurement again.
I thought that being an industrial designer and having worked before with electronic and coding things would not be that of a surprise. To my disbelief, it was a stressful pleasure to re-learn equations, the language of color coding resistors, turning on LEDs, and modifying a sketch for the LDR. I’ve never used Arduino before and will never again; still, the experience was somewhat satisfactory as I learned the infinite possibilities of designing objects with such a simple tool. I am very grateful for the intention behind open-source hardware and software.
About the experience, the Arduino software decided the code was incompatible with my computer, which was the end for me.
Frustration’s Outcome
I still had to finish the seminar and present an outcome, so I applied the experience to my field. I proposed a conceptual design of another measuring device.
Revisiting design school lectures once more, a vital one was anthropometry and ergonomy. The primary bibliography we used was Las Dimensiones Humanas en los Espacios Interiores: Estándares antropométricos, written by Panero and Zelnik. I used this book to consult the anthropometric tables, which provide the most current data available on human body size, organized by age and percentile groupings, as one of its many descriptions says. According to the values and measurements of this book, I used to design furniture and spaces for Ecuadorian users. I noticed that the designs were inaccurate because our bodies are different, so it was another existential crisis — and a whole discussion for another time.
Drawing on this second crisis, I decided to design an analog tool that measures anthropometric features to create a guide of Ecuadorian percentiles; that way, the design of things would adequately fit us.
The project aim was — and still is — to allow Ecuadorians to appropriate their relationship with objects to guarantee a high-quality experience of achieving daily activities with the help of tools fittingly designed for our bodies.
In 2014, with Ruth Almeida, we created a prototype of this measuring tool, an adaptation of a Pin Art Toy. It was supposed to form an immediate 3d model of your hand, and then it would allow you to make measurements. It failed, of course, because the pins needed to measure hundredths of a millimeter, and they just measured millimeters.
So, for the master’s seminar, I proposed a 2021 prototype. The design concept is a simple, portable digital device measuring human body shapes using the same elements and principles as the dynamometer. The tool makes use of light and an LDR sensor type. The changes of light the LDR senses will be interpreted in values and then into data.
The object would have a light source, and the sensor would be large enough to capture the light. The person to be measured must be placed between these components, blocking the light the LDR sensor receives. This change of light that the LDR senses is the key to measuring person’s shapes.
Of course, this is just a sketch in its earliest stages, and I would probably never work on it further — unless someone pays me. Still, it’s a happy outcome of a story and an experience of measurement practices that connected through the years.
