A Study of the Modular Cabinet Design

• Main Authors: Tseng-Hsing Sun, 孫增興
• Other Authors: Jih-Shyong Lin
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/26730052512231566724

碩士 === 大同大學 === 工業設計研究所 === 91 === Abstract According to the household income and expenditure survey by the Department of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics of the Taipei City Government in 2000, cabinet topped all furniture expenses among Taipei citizens, taking up as high as 25%. In 2001, modular cabinet took up 15% of the total sales of IKEA, an internationally renowned furniture brand on the market. For other well-known furniture chains, cabinet is also among the top sellers, taking up 38% of the total sales of COMLIFE in 2000 and 25% of the total sales of the French-based CONFORAMA furniture chains in 2001. Clearly, cabinet plays an important role in the furniture market. Cabinet is a normal furniture item for the living room, bedroom, and study room. As is the central space of family life., the living room is the place for family gathering, visitor reception, and realization of personal taste for living. Therefore, many people pay special attention to the cabinet placement in their living room. With modular living room cabinet systems however, most of ordinary consumers have difficulty figuring out how to select from the availability of component choices to how to coordinate with other furniture items and decorations in the living room. On the other hand, hiring an interior designer may be too costly and that the designer may not necessarily deliver the consumer’s own desired result. Since it is sometimes very difficult for the designer and the consumer to fully understand each other, the cognitive gap is often evident in the final result. However, due to automated production, modular cabinets possess many advantages including product cost reduction, product variety, easy delivery, environment protection, shorten development time etc. and has thus become a major trend on the market. The purpose of this paper is to develop a model of modular living room cabinet assembly based on survey results. To help solve the miscommunication between interior designer and ordinary consumers mentioned above, this study will also design a practicable consumer requirement questionnaire on modular living room cabinet purchase for ordinary consumers to conduct a self-survey on their own and for interior designers to better assess consumers’ needs. In order to understand the modular product architecture and to analyze the current state of the market including product shortcomings, this study conducted a questionnaire survey, case interviews, and literature review, and analyzed the data obtained from the consumer requirement questionnaire. In this study, modular living room cabinet design units are divided into five categories of ground units, hanger cabinets, cabinet units, layer units, and accessories units. Finally, the five modular units identified were used for practice design to provide different cabinet assembly possibilities for consumers’ choice, and then a modular living room cabinet design questionnaire is designed with home living conditions taken into consideration to help consumers spare the cost in hiring an interior designer and to easily find out their ideal living room cabinets on their own. In modular living room cabinet practice design cases, the ground units are allowed to change height to fit in the various environments according to consumers’ needs, and a bulked up front end in dowel design is proved to help strengthen the quality of the hardware and to make the whole furniture more secure and safe. The hanger units are designed to help better utilize the space of walls, and the layer units and compartment design for the drawers are aimed at improving the space usage of cabinet. Electric wire holes and outlets are also added to the back board of ground units for easy passing of power supply lines, and steel plate is attached to the bottom of the table surface of ground units to avoid deformation. This study found that the provision of computer-aided 3D graphic design of modular units and the manipulation of various modular units for cabinet composition on the basis of the consumer requirement questionnaire survey results and the design of consumer self-survey questionnaire for modular living room cabinet purchase is an effective and applicable model, which is expected to provide a good direction and reference in the realm of modular cabinet design. It is hoped that researchers and industry players will establish more useful application models in the future to help enhance the quality of modular cabinet design.