Named after the aesthetic flavor behind traditional Indian arts, 'RASA' is a product designed to help music lovers. RASA focuses at one of the most common problems faced by anyone who uses earphones to listen to music, viz. tangling of earphones inside the user’s pocket. RASA handles this problem using its simple design construction, while being just another light-weight and slim addition to the user’s pocket.
Any avid music listener would know the level of distress caused by an irritating task like untangling earphone cords. While it may be something that’s bearable if done once or twice a day anything more than that becomes infuriating. This problem though a common occurrence doesn’t have a specific solution other than winding the earphone cord creatively or buying a new device altogether like wireless ear-pods or flat wire earphones which not only are expensive but come with other innate problems like misplacing or charging.
Conceived during a problem identification sprint in an ergonomics course, RASA was a team project aimed at making lives of earphone users simpler.
To get a broader understanding of how people deal with the problem of tangling earphones, we conducted a class wide survey and an extensive online sweep. This helped us gather existing solutions as well as workarounds that users employ, while also helping us gauge the intensity of the issue.
Our survey revealed two major trends. To step away from the problems of earphones tangling, many people shifted towards buying wireless variants of earphones or employed certain practices that would avoid the earphones tangling in pocket. Both these approaches come with their own set problems. Wireless variants are generally very costly and some designs are easily misplaced. Practices like folding wire every time after usage is highly annoying and still sometimes results in tangling. Other practices like wrapping the wire around the phone also are unfeasible in cases when wearing tighter clothes.
The market research and class wide polls revealed a few trends that caught our eye. For starters, one of the most apparent problem was the sheer variety of earphones out in the market. This suggested that the solution we design should be earphone agnostic. Another important consideration was that the proposed solution should be slim enough to be put in the user's pocket as that was the key application area.
Based on the concepts ideated, we chose to go forward with a hybrid of the cap-based and rotation-based concept. These designs were chosen in interest towards cost effective designing as other concepts like the sleeve-based designs required intricate material and machining which drove the cost of the product higher.
Out of all the ideas brainstormed, we picked a few concepts and refined them using Solidworks. These designs were then practically tested using 3D printed prototypes.
These were re-iterated and re-worked on to eliminate the problems that we found in the initial versions.
RASA's current design lacks a few elements that in turn stops it from achieving its full potential. Foremost of these is retractability. Our preliminary research showed that people find performing repetitive tasks periodically (like rolling earphones) quite annoying. RASA in its current form gives them a task that isn't as annoying but is still repetitive. Having a spring and lock based mechanism embedded within it, that in turn, mitigates the repetitive rotating for folding the wire can make the product much better. Apart from this, there are a few points in the locking mechanism that can be streamlined and made more robust for longer use. Reinforcing those edges can lead to a much better product.
