International students in the UK are frequent travelers whom fly long haul distances often 2-3 times a year to and from their home country. The project was to understand if travelling products could be improved on an emotional level to provide a deeper connection with their suitcase. The chosen suitcase was the Samsonite Firelite Spinner series as this was a common suitcase that international student's traveled with.

From interviewing various international students, there was a pattern within their user journey showing that packing their suitcase was not an enjoyable experience. This was often due to frustrations and hassles to fit packing together,  worries about the luggage being overweight, a lot of physical labor and strain, and the moving and transportation of suitcases to be a hassle physically and mentally. 

These issues ruins the beginning of the students travels journey and thus lead to their dissatisfaction and negative experience.

Using Maslow's Taxonomy of Needs, a new suitcase was to be designed to fulfill the upper level of needs whilst still maintaining the lower necessities. 

Originally when the user moved with their suitcase, they would be self conscious of the noise from the wheels and attract attention. The LED lights aims to capitalise on this attention and transform it into a personalised touch that represents the user’s personality and lifestyle. 

The lights would light up to show a landmark of the destination they are travelling to that expresses the user’s excitement for travelling. When the suitcase is moving, an animation of the landmark will play as well which gives further meaning and excitement of travelling.

These visual affordances would provide expressions that leads to higher esteem and self-actualisation  leading to further emotional and personal value to the user. 

The collapsible wheels are intended to fulfill the desire of the maturity of travel by allowing flexibility of being mobile and stationary.

When the user needs the suitcase to be stationary, they would push the button next to the handle which is an affordance to collapse the wheels.

The main design intervention takes place between the packing and transportation stage as this was identified as the areas with the most negative experiences. 

Through the implementation of the  collapsible wheels and hidden handles, Deslite aims to improve the packing stage by making it easier and reduces the strain required for lifting and turning over the suitcase for packing. 

The LED landmark on the suitcase aims to improve the transportation stage primarily as the lights will be a way to express the users personality and excitement when their travelling. This would in turn make them have a more positive experience in that as aspect. 

The airport stage would be a secondary improvement that shows the moving animation would be an exciting feature that transforms attracted attention into amazement from others. This would in turn make the user feel good and have an improved self-esteem about their journey.

Deslite shows the potential for improved meaning and value to the user through understanding their needs and fulfilling them as much as possible.
When presenting this concept to various international students, the idea was found to be very novel and generated many positive responses as this could be a product  that they would desire for themselves.