Voltimore Student Desk

As part of a four-person student team (Round Tuit), I acted as a design consultant for Furnware, a leading New Zealand educational furniture manufacturer. Over the course of the semester, we followed a structured New Product Development (NPD) process to identify a market gap and bring a commercially viable product from concept through to a working prototype.
Through primary and secondary research — including stakeholder mapping, persona cards, empathy maps, journey maps, and a targeted survey — we identified that no desk on the market integrated power access for students in a classroom setting, despite a growing BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend in schools. This became the foundation for the Voltimore Student Desk: a school desk featuring a recessed cable management cavity housing 240V AC outlets, USB-A, and USB-C ports, accessed via a soft-close lid with cable-friendly bristle sealing. I contributed across the full development lifecycle, including concept ideation and screening, design specification development using a House of Quality matrix, CAD modelling in SolidWorks, physical prototype construction (laser-cut MDF and 3D-printed components), and stakeholder testing. The prototype received strongly positive feedback, with test participants preferring it over conventional desks.