This project is by Ziyan Huang, an Industrial Design Masters candidate at Germany’s Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences. Huang’s Cursor Measurement Tool is a proposal for project sponsor Festool. The tool is intended to make it easier for tradespeople to transfer dimensions from blueprints onto the real-world spaces they’re building or installing within.
Sadly there is no descriptive copy accompanying the project, beyond what we’ve stated above. But we can see that the system consists of two units. Aside from the fact that they’re connected by a tether, the forms signal their pairing; the shorter unit has a crescent-shaped chunk carved out of it that mirrors the convex form of the taller unit.
An internal mechanism is presumably calibrated to determine the distance between the smaller unit and the corner-like cursor on the taller unit. Furthermore, the taller unit has an angled screen atop it.
The device is nifty, but I do have two pieces of constructive criticism about the design. The first is that the screen is angled, in my opinion, in the wrong direction. If a tradesperson is supposed to set a measurement using the devices, then make a mark at the corner cursor, why isn’t the screen angled towards the cursor? It doesn’t make sense to me that the operator should have to move from their marking position in order to confirm the dimension.
My second criticism is that the Modernist forms, don’t match Festool’s established design language, which eschews pure geometric shapes for more functional, ergonomics-based forms. Simply applying the brand’s colors and logos does not close this gap for me.
This project was executed under professor Jan Bäse and with the cooperation of Festool.
