Context
Thailand is facing prisoner overcrowded inside prisons. The main reason for this situation is that the released prisoners commit crimes again to return to prison on purpose because they can’t make their living after release. One of the strategies that the Ministry of Correction uses to address this challenge is to develop their skill while serving their custody. The prison provides various courses for prisoners to enroll from craftsmanship skills and Thai royal culinary to undergraduate studies. Most prisoners finish their studies before release, so the prisons encourage prisoners to create products to sell to make money they will receive after release. Despite the story and quality, the sale volume is not that high and has a very small profit margin.
My undergraduate dissertation is a collaboration with the Ministry of Corrections to utilize design methods to investigate the root cause and rethink the design, manufacturing, and framework.
Scope of Work This project focuses on developing at the product and manufacturing levels. As a university thesis, I focused on Bangkok Remand Prison as a case study. This project aims to create a framework that can be used as a model for all prisons.
Project Approach This project focused on developing the product that have an impact on manufacturing flow. This approach help me to uncover the insights from the makers to the users.
Research & Analysis Bangkok Remand Prison Bangkok Remand Prison is a prison that holds over 4000-5000 prisoners per year. This prison provides many training courses for prisoners, including wood carpentry, metalsmithing, rattan crafts, pottery, and textiles. The products from these courses will be sold for the money for prisoner’s settlement after they get released. 24% of Bangkok Remand Prison’s product revenue is furniture.
well-known for wood and rattan furniture.
Bangkok Remand Prison's Materials Bangkok Remand Prison used premium materials to create furniture, including teak, rattan, and steel pipe. With these materials, the huge selling point for the prison is that customers can have a good quality product at a cheaper price.
Stakeholder The main people inside the prison are prisoners and prison officers. To manage and produce a products, they diversify themselves into many roles among many workshops.
Bangkok Remand Prison’s workflow
I created task analysis to uncover the flow within the prisons. With a rigid schedule, prisoners have only 4 hours per day in the workshop to do their work
Problem Framing
With these problems and limitations, together with cheap selling prices, the prison cannot make a huge stock of products in time and make a profit that is significant enough to help prisoners. The cost and selling price are not compatible with each other
Customer Analysis I created the STP mapping to analyze the current target group which is a couple older than 40 years old in sub-urban area with an income around 40,0000 - 50,000 baht per month. With new approach, I intend to extend the target group into younger generation, closer to the urban area with above average income. Their key decision factors are price, quality and visual.
Positioning Strategy I set up the positioning map to visualize the target position for this project within Thai furniture market. After worked with the prison, we agreed to position in above middle market with a contemporary style.
Design Challenge How might we improve a manufacturing flow according to the prison’s limitation with the design of furniture that will lead to the development of design and increasing of revenue.
Ideation Design Principle
Design Alternation I came up with 3 design alternatives. After carefully analyze, I decided to go with first direction, the furniture that has main structure made of teak wood and decorate with rattan structure. This direction provided the fastest manufacturing duration and still offer the looks of craftsmanships with a reduction of rattan, the most expensive material in furniture market.
Design Concept The design concept for this collection is “Embrace”. The design will represent the sensual of warm and welcome with a curve and radius that will provide a feeling of homie gesture.
Design Sketch
Prototype
Gå-rd collection, pronounced as “Gord” which means embrace in the Thai language, is a collection of furniture that can be used indoors and outdoors. Gå-rd collection is able to customize the color of rattan and sizes due to customer demands. This collection is capable of manufacturing in an industrial-craft workflow.
Validation To validate this project, I created a product refinement to test in real manufacturing line with prisoners from the Bangkok Remand Prison.
New Framework for Ministry of Justice After validating the design, I created this framework and hand-off to the Ministry of Justice to implement in other prisons as well. This framework will help the prison create the product that is appropriates to their contexts. This framework synthesizes based on internal factors, including their expertise, tools, and prisoner’s routine, together with external factors, which are trends and customers. The design generated from considering these factors will fit perfectly and improve their production process.
Implication After validated this project, I found out that my project had created variety of impacts to the Bangkok Remand Prison ,including..
This project was selected as 1 of 15 Best Product Design Thesis by Degree show 2019, the biggest design thesis competition in Thailand.
Project Contributor 