Publication

This master’s thesis describes the rising need of a more portable booster cushion for young kids as car sharing and carpooling becomes more common in everyday society. It presents the background to booster cushions, anatomy and car sharing and then begins describing different phases of the product development process that was used to develop the final products.

The first phase after the initial background presentation includes gathering information from the customers and users in the form of interviews while at the same time examining the products on the current market and patents through benchmarking. A survey was also made to complement the interviews. All data was compiled afterwards in a requirement specification which acted as the foundation for the second phase, the concept generation phase. This phase saw the creation of 26 different concepts which was all evaluated iteratively through different matrices until only four concepts remained. Rough 3D-models were made of three of the concepts to evaluate their feasibility. Two were eliminated due to the contrary, thus, only two concepts remained, which evolved into the two final products.

During the final phase of the development process an early prototype of the former product was made and observations of it was documented and evaluated. A static structural FEM analysis was also performed of the former product’s theoretical behavior in a crash, and a revision was designed which was more durable, robust and safe than the previous version.