Fabrication
Industrial Design
Iterative Prototyping
Vertical Whiteboard Organizer
A rotating, floor-standing marker organizer designed for the Burt Swersey Inventor’s Studio at RPI — solving the studio’s most common complaint: never being able to find a dry erase marker near the whiteboards.
Stylized 3D render of the vertical whiteboard organizer concept, spiraling PVC column
Role
Industrial Design & Fabrication
Timeline
3–5 Weeks
Tools
PVC Pipe, Heat Gun, Bandsaw, Wood Fabrication
Method
Modular iterative prototyping — centerpiece and platform mechanisms tested separately, then combined and refined in context.
My process

From first sketches to a tested, working prototype — the full arc this project moved through.

Grid of ten thumbnail sketches exploring proposed solutions for marker storage (process thumbnail)
01
Brainstorm
Explored vertical storage concepts to keep whiteboard markers visible and within reach instead of scattered on a ledge. Sketched ten proposed solutions.
Hand-drawn mind map of the Inventor's Studio's pain points, centered on the DIS Studio Space (process thumbnail)
02
Research
Looked at how people actually store and lose markers at whiteboards to identify the real pain point, mind-mapping the studio's specific issues.
Three stages of PVC pipe side by side: raw pipe, marked pre-molding, and final post-molding (process thumbnail)
03
Prototyping
Built the centerpiece and rotating platform mechanisms as separate physical prototypes, molding PVC pipe openings by hand across three stages.