Dutch company Bugaboo is world renowned for its cleverly designed pushchairs, but has now sought to take 20 years of expertise in this field to help them reinvent an item that has remained largely unchanged since the 1970s: the humble suitcase.
Bugaboo’s co-founder and chief design officer Max Barenbrug took inspiration from seeing travellers struggling through airports with dozens of different shaped bags, and observing the many different interactions these travellers have with their bags. He therefore set out to create a completely new type of wheeled suitcase that would be impossibly easy to control, and could be optimised for the various needs that arise throughout a journey.
(Image credit: Bugaboo)
The result, a modular luggage set and wheeled chassis known as The Boxer, is a brilliant piece of product design that could set the benchmark for how we travel in the future. A durable but incredibly lightweight four-wheeled chassis can be loaded up with a variety of configurations of suitcase, cabin bag and laptop case, along with attachments for additional bags and items of clothing. Its ultimate aim is make the travel experience as simple as possible, providing travellers with a highly mobile configuration of luggage that perfectly suits their individual needs. Of the Boxer, Barenbrug said that “We want to design products that make our customers feel free, unburdened, like a load is off their shoulders.”
The Boxer is a great example of product design that looks past current expectations of a item, and instead returns to the roots of the users needs, and how best to service these needs.