Mu He Design Studio

Designed in 2022-2025

Accessory

Suunto in-house Design Team

Concept 1 is easy to understand. There is a strap collecting device allowing you to collect the bungee strap into the space in a disc shape. However in real test, the usibility of this structure is highly up to the friction between the bungee and the device itself. If it is too easy to loose, the strap cannot hold it tight enough. Instead if there is too much friction, the operation of tidying up bungee would not be smooth,as the bungee is relatively soft, it will deform as a whole. And because of the thickness of bungee, the adjustability is not as wide as we expected.

So, what if we just use bungee then? to warp it around your wrist, no matter the size of the wrist, bungee should be longer than that anyway. At the end, users just need to fix the bungee and it should be properly tighten up.

In Concept 2, the overall user experience is highly up to the design piece of the connecting part on lugs, the end part and the stopper. Bungee strap in fact is a very common solution in diving, but just no companies make it like a more organized product. It is in general more like a DIY solution where every diver could find a piece of bungee, then tie them onto the wrist, make a knot then done. This concept certainly adds more feelings of a product to it. Except the adjustability, the quality of the bungee itself is also difficult to define. If it is too thin, it is fragile. If it is too thick, regardless of elasticity, it usually overlaps by themselves. This experience is overall acceptable, as it makes the purpose, but it is not perfect.

Can we try another material with a similar solution?

For Concept 3, we return back to the idea 1, but change the material from Bungee to a cord collecting system called Boa. It is an US company based in Colorado. This system is commonly used in outdoor performance sports industry, like trail running shoes or cycling equipments. The advantage of it is certainly the smoothness of storaing cords, but also its volumne. It is so lightweighted that you will never feel the problem that bungee brings to you. Instead, the disadvantage of it is obviously the comfortability and elasticity. That is why in the design I added webbing pad to protect users’ skin. But maybe the elasticity wouldn’t be a problem as long as the range of adjustment is enough.

Then the next question is how can we make a holder for the Boa thing in an ergonomic way.

Followings are the funcitoniong prototypes made by me.

By connecting the Boa system directly to the lug, we do not have the deforming problem any more with this design. However, in some cases, when people do diving with gloves, it can be still difficult to operate the Boa thing with their thick gloves on.

Since the principle has been verified, one of the solution of above question, is definitely to contact Boa, and co-work on one of the cord collector together with Suunto’s diving experience. This problem can be systematicly solved.

But in our journey, what else can we do to this adjustability problem?
What if we make a concept with the same ways of folding like bungee concept, but just change the material from bungee to webbing? With webbing material, we could be able to define the elasticity of the webbing itself, to make it think but as elastic as the concept 3 boa cord, but in a more comfortable tactility.

This version meets what we planed, but the adjustable range is not as that much as we planned. Let’s try another way to fold the webbing. And I found another way to do it.

But the buckle looks promising, as it bites the webbing well.

We need to define these following parts:
1. a part to connect webbing with the lug
2. a part to adjust the position and length of the webbing
3. a buckle to lock the adjustable webbing in a adjusted fixed position
4. a part to connect webbing with the lug and the end piece of the webbing

And the webbing material it self.

Different weaving patterns and different elastomers inside makes each webbing different.
For the other physical parts, we 3d printed them for a quicker prototyping process.

This solution of one strap with wide range of adjustability eventually becomes a US patent with my name and the team.

If you are interested, you can find the document here :

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/16/c5/53/db0a065141a2f3/US12127643.pdf