MeFree Yoga was put together with the intention to provide the best Yoga equipment to beginners and experts alike. One of the key defining aspects of MeFree was its ability to create new Yoga equipment as required by the Yoga studios and especially the specific Asanas.
MeFree was associated with Iyengar Yoga and involved in the design and manufacture of specific Yoga Props as specified and researched by the Yoga Guru BKS Iyengar himself. My role was of the Industrial Designer who designed and oversaw the manufacturing development of all of the Yoga Props. My role even stretched further to oversee the packaging as well.
Like every User Centric Design exercise, the process begins by observing the users. Your observations along with the feedback of the yoga gurus inform you about the issues which they feel the Yoga students are facing. A keen eye lets you see far better as to what issues Students are struggling with. The following were a few of the observations noted:
1. Props need to be sturdy and weight bearing. Students range from 40kgs to over 120kgs depending on the program they have applied for.
2. Props are used by pregnant women, senior citizens as well as non-flexible students. They need to be confidence inspiring and robustly designed and executed.
3. Props need to have floor grip to ensure they do not slide or move/slip during the Yoga asana, specific precautions to be taken to ensure contact surface with the floor is kept rough.
4. Props to be designed to provide support and assistance to help perfect the Asanas. For this the Prop needs to follow an appropriate profile of the body without being too intrusive.
I also doubled up as a graphic designer to help ideate their t-shirt designs and the ones below are few of my sketches which were later worked upon.
The process began with sketching out the designs and then designing the product geometry for engineering assembly. I also spent time with the wood-working artisans to understand rigid joineries and various wood-joints specifically used by them. American Pine Wood was used for creating these Props. This allowed the Props to be light in weight and robust too, a clear lacquer coat also ensured that the grains were displayed beautifully adding to the aesthetic appeal of the product.
The joinery details were further captured and mentioned accordingly in the product drawings done for these components. The first few prototypes were tested by the Yoga Gurus themselves and feedback was offered on minor tweaks. Post these tweaks and their approval, series manufacturing commenced. Special purpose machines were installed which allowed greater consistency in the product.
A few of the Props were too large to be shipped and since these were very popular with equally high demand, the decision was made to design them for dis-assembly. These were shipped flat-packed with assembly manuals for DIY assembly at the User end.
Assembly and Disassembly Time-Lapse Videos
DIY props, had an assembly instructions leaflet attached alongwith them. These are shown below.
A total of 37 Yoga Props were designed, prototyped and engineered for manufacture during a short period of 3 months by me along with the manufacturing team at the Bhiwandi warehouse location in Mumbai. Shown below is the final product basket on offer in the market by MeFree. You can visit www.mefree.com for further details.
