New mounting solution for acoustic ceilings

Abstract: Acoustic ceilings in today’s market has to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. In order to fulfill those needs Saint-Gobain Ecophon has developed a product called Focus DS which is a demountable acoustic ceiling with a concealed grid system. Even though Focus DS fulfills the markets needs Ecophon has discovered that there are issues with the current design of Focus DS that often results in damages to the ceiling tiles. The objective of this master thesis was to investigate possible problems with the current Focus DS and generate new concepts based on the results from those investigations. The project started with a problem analysis of the current design of Focus DS and was followed by interviews and observations in order to gather raw data for the identification of the consumer needs. Based on the consumer needs a concept generation was performed in two parts. The first part was an external search which included an investigation of what kind of products that where on the market (that fulfilled the consumer needs) as well as a patent search. The second part was an internal search were concepts were generated based on the findings from the external search as well as based on personal knowledge. In the last part of the master thesis final concepts were chosen with the help of a decision matrix as well as with the help of intuition, two concepts were chosen. The first concept is to add grooves to the current design of Focus DS in order to stop the tiles from moving unwantedly. The second concept is a spring that you add to the grid system also in order to stop the tiles from moving unwantedly.