Shenzhen Study Tour

A two week intensive dive into the electronics manufacturing of Shenzhen

In January 2020, Dr. Rowan Page and I took a group of 5 talented Industrial Design students on a study tour to Shenzhen, China. The goal of the tour was to refine the design of the existing SensiLab DrawBot with a view towards manufacture. The existing design was functional but had a number of shortcomings. By embedding ourselves in the maker and manufacturing culture of Shenzhen we were able to quickly revise elements of the design so that the robot would be much easier to build.

The trip started with tours of the city and various factories. We visited prototypers, PCB manufacturers, injection moulding facilities and shoe factories.

We also setup in the Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab (SZOIL) a local maker space where the team was able work intensively on the new design ideas. The maker space was close to the famous Huaqiangbei electronic markets so finding inspiration and parts to test was easy.

The final design of the DrawBot ended up looking much better and will be easier to manufacture and assemble. We also worked on a business plan and price models for the DrawBot which will serve us well as we explore possible commercialisation options.

A more detailed account of the trip can be found in this blog post on the SensiLab website.