The Creative Storytelling course is one of the courses in Advanced Product Design program when I was studying in Umeå Institute of Design. (the course website here) During this course we were asked to make a video for one selected project from the previous ones.
The project I decided on was FLIR Pure - a detecting and cleaning device which for household users when they are dealing with their fresh produce.
Over the course of four weeks, the focus of this class wasn't just on creating an introduction video but also on the process and methods we chose, which mattered the most.
It was a great opportunity for us to experiment with things we had never tried before—whether it was using a new tool or finding a new method to tell a story. The result didn't have to be just a simple, straightforward product description video.
The project’s personality is calm and reliable. But what if we approached its video in a more dynamic, unexpected, and fun way—making the cleaning process feel more like playing a game? Could it be cinematic? Could it even be interactive with the audience? Could it be in a Lego animation style?
I started by drawing a quick sketch to communicate my idea: to make the experience more joyful and somehow connected with the concept of a game. At the same time, I wanted to include a metaphor for the cleaning process. This led me to the idea of combining it with a ping-pong team-building game. Participants would transfer a ping-pong ball from one location to another using different materials to create functional structures. As the ball follows the structure, the camera would follow it. As the ball rolls, its color would gradually change from gray to pure white, symbolizing the cleaning process.
(A similar concept is seen in the video by OK Go—'This Too Shall Pass,' where they embedded an amazing idea using a pure ball transfer structure, shot in one continuous take).
I tried with several different CMF variations, fianlly decided on one which is more suitable to the product’s CMF, which is calm and clean. The main material is stainless steel.
For the ball-rolling realization, I tried using a physics simulation in Blender. I also found some new methods on YouTube for creating domino effects in Blender. Although I encountered several bugs along the way, I still managed to figure it out in the end. There were some interesting mistakes during the domino simulation baking, from which I learned a lot of valuable lessons :’ )