Orbitkey Nest

Size: 113mm x 35mm x 12mm
Materials: PC / Zinc / Nylon / textiles / Leather / Elastic
Manufacturing: Polymer injection Moulding / Die casting / hand assembly
Company: Orbitkey
Year: 2020
Images: Orbitkey

Nest became a result of looking deep into an emerging transitional type of work environment finding opportunities to enhance the experience of mobile work by organising your tools in a way that creates much needed routine to the experience. Empowering the user and putting the user's emerging needs front and centre in the process was the core focus of the process and was pivotal in how the final design was realised.

Technology and how it was influencing our work has made some serious leaps forward in the last few years. We could feel its impact and we knew that the way we would work in the future would be different to how we worked today.This posed interesting questions for us as a design team and we were obsessed with understanding how we could influence positive change in the way we work alongside the technology and social shifts that were happening. 

The rise of content creators, side hustles, small businesses and flexible work within larger organisations was evidence of this new movement that we were amongst. And in many ways they were actively shaping this new future of work. Many long and conceptual discussions arose picking apart this idea of future work and how technologies played their parts in it. We were diving deep into the unknown here but we could already feel its impact and we had a feeling someday it was going to be our new norm. After much pondering, discussions and looking around for items that could fill this void, we realised there were little dedicated tools out there that supported this new transitional type of workforce.

Realising the current environment was a clumsy unorganised space. There was a lot of bag rummaging, emptying bags to find smaller items, cords tangling everything into well formed balls of stuff, moving items back and forth between bags, prams, car seats or other bags. Lots of lost or forgotten items. It was a mess and the more we identified these interactions the more we realised there was an opportunity to disrupt this landscape with purpose built interventions that empowered the users.

In parallel to understanding these clumsy interactions, There were some interesting things happening in the digital space. Content creators were sharing images of their tools and other items they carried with them. They were all neatly organised and laid flat almost in precision like fashion. They were telling stories of their individuality, their passions via their tools they carried through perfectly curated photographs. This was polarising to see this alongside the identified messy reality of life moving these objects around.

This observation reinforced the direction and we started to sketch up and prototype rough ideas of simple tools that could help dissolve these transitional issues and start empowering the users. We wanted to support workers through ever changing environments and allow them to carry their tools in a way that empowered them through their entire day. To make this system work effortlessly, we needed a device that could be seamlessly used in any environment, surface and location. with a strong focus on consistency and repeatability which was the missing ingredient to the existing carry solutions.

After defining what Nest had to do, we set out detailing the micro interactions of the product and how it was to be manufactured. All decisions through the design and development were to support the notions of easy carry, lightweight, protection, ease of access and consistency of interaction.

One of the most important details on the Nest became the hinge, this small innovation unlocked Nests ability to to be both a great stationary product, whilst still allowing un-compromised access when on the go. Access to Nest needed to be seamless, quick and consistent and with this, the hinge ensured it could embed itself seamlessly into the rigours of the day to day. This Unlocking Nest’s potential and created a rather magical interaction solidifying Nest firmly into its emerging category of mobile work.