Cool Down Cushion
Design Marketing
This project was completed as part of a Behavioral Marketing and Design course at Kyushu University, run in collaboration with Tansu no Gen, a furniture company based in Fukuoka. The course brought together behavioral observation, web data analysis, and product design thinking to explore how real user behavior could inform new furniture concepts. The final deliverable was an individual project, where each student developed their own design proposal based on shared group observations and independent research.
Client:
Tansu no Gen
Role:
Design Strategist
Year:
2025
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Challenge
During the observation session held in the university gymnasium, students used actual Tansu no Gen furniture and recreated everyday living situations. From watching how people actually sat, moved, and used the space, it became clear that staying cool in summer was a recurring and unresolved problem. Portable fans were being used constantly, but the way people were using them created a set of frustrations that no existing product was really addressing well.
Objective
The goal was to identify a real behavioral pain point observed during the session and develop a furniture product concept that could genuinely solve it. Rather than designing something abstract, the challenge was to ground the proposal in what people were actually doing and what was getting in their way.
Results
My initial proposal was a table with built-in fan holders, but feedback from the stakeholders questioned whether the form was the right fit for the problem. Revisiting the observations and reviewing search trend data on Tansu no Gen's platform showed that users were searching around portability and seasonal comfort, which pointed toward a different direction. After defining three use scenarios where the pain points would still apply outside the home, picnics, camping, and sleepovers, and exploring two chair forms in Adobe Illustrator, the final proposal became the Cool Down Cushion: a portable floor cushion with built-in rechargeable fans in the backrest, adjustable fan intensity, armrests, and a choice of fabric or leather finish designed to work across multiple settings.
