Work / Smart Furniture / Tangible interaction

FILO

The wardrobe is the most public object in every home; everyone passes it, everyone uses it. FILO is an add-on that turns it into a place for private messages, delivered exactly where and when they’re supposed to be heard.

Role: Product design from laser cutting to 3D printing; interaction design
Domain: Smart furniture · Tangible UI
Methods: Brainstorming, design thinking, rapid prototyping cycles
Fabrication: Laser cutting, 3D printing, stenciled keychain hangers
Context: Everyday-object augmentation
Outcome: A working tangible-messaging prototype, mounted and tested

A person interacting with the FILO message unit mounted inside a wardrobe next to hanging keychains — FILO in the wardrobe: messages live where keys, coats, and departures happen.

Problem

Public space, private message

Household messages fail in both directions: notes on the fridge are public to every guest, and texts arrive at the wrong moment entirely. We wanted to design a product that lets you place and share messages in and around the wardrobe, heard right at the moment of leaving or arriving, the moments they are about.

Because the wardrobe is so public, privacy became the core design tension: how do you leave a personal message in the busiest spot of the home without broadcasting it?

Design

The keychain is the key

The answer was tangible: individual keychain hangers with distinct designs and stencils that each person carries with their keys. Hanging your keychain is both identity and intent, messages addressed to you find you, and only you, while the object on the rail stays perfectly ordinary.

Personal keychains give each family member a private channel inside a shared object.
Placement in the wardrobe ties messages to the natural moments of leaving and arriving.
An ordinary appearance keeps the private layer invisible to visitors.

Brainstorming Design thinking Rapid prototyping Fabrication

A message is private not because it’s encrypted, but because it arrives only for you, right where it was meant to be heard.

design intent, FILO

Build

Prototyped until it belonged

After multiple brainstorming and design thinking sessions we moved straight into rapid prototyping, testing iteration after iteration until the result satisfied. I designed the product end to end, from laser-cut housing to 3D-printed parts, and designed the interaction that ties keychain, wardrobe, and message together.

Process

Making FILO

FILO is an add-on, so the first question was what to add it to. We weighed the everyday objects people already live with, then committed to the clothes rail, the most public surface in the home, and built the housing for it: laser-cut MDF panels, 3D-printed listening horns, and stenciled keychains, tested and mounted until it belonged there.

The everyday objects we weighed before settling on the wardrobe rail.

Laser-cut MDF panels with flower, hexagon, heart, and star stencil cutouts, plus patterned keychain blanks — Laser-cut MDF: the box panels and the stenciled keychain blanks.

3D-printed funnel horn seated in its circular base — 3D-printed listening horn and base.

3D-printed horn next to the taped electronics module — The horn meets the electronics module.

Assembled FILO mounted on the clothes rail with patterned keychains hanging from it — Assembled and mounted, keychains hanging in place.

A person leaning in to listen to a message through the FILO horn at the wardrobe — Leaning in for a message at the rail.

A person holding the listening horn to their ear while hanging a keychain — The horn to the ear: a message heard, privately.

The finished clothes rail with coats, a bag, and shoes, FILO mounted on the side panel — FILO in place: a private channel on the most public object in the room.

FILO in use: leaving a private message right where it is meant to be heard.