Kenneth Yu

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MEMOIR


Industrial Design
Spring 2025, 3 Weeks


Tools: Solidworks, 3D Printing, Blender Cycles, Manufacturing
Team: Individual 

Memoir brings back the love and memory that a physical letter holds in our digital world.

It lives on your door and prints a past message from a loved one before your day starts.













We don’t remember our texts


Nowadays, writing letters has been largely replaced by online texting, which often makes conversations detached and short-lived.








Mood board


I wanted to create a simple device that brings the weight of written letters into digital texting.

Such letters are usually accompanied by flowers. Memoir’s side surfaces resemble pedals folding inwards, and the front surface mirrors the paper’s natural curve, emerging from the flower.








Past memory in physicality


Memoir allows you to store cherished digital messages through your phone.

Every morning, it presents a printed memory as you open your door, bringing you back to the physical world.










Simple by design


Memoir employs a laser proximity sensor to detect user presence. The clean interaction keeps focus onto the message.









Cherish the memory


The physical message can be a bookmark and collected on a calendar.










Easily removable


Memoir is not glued to your door, so you can effortlessly bring it down for paper and battery replacements.








Designed as if manufactured


Prototyped fully functional model with Arduino, and soldered the internal components: receipt printer, laser distance sensor, and real time clock.

Coded C software so the user distance would trigger the message to print. The real time clock ensures one print per day.