Jai Shah

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University of Nottingham > Engineering > Departments > Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering > PDM Exhibitions > 2023 > MEng students > Jai Shah

Giving you access to unique styles of footwear without the throwaway culture.

I'm a highly motivated analytical and creative product design engineering student with an inquisitive mind and unquenchable thirst for knowledge. I've attianed skills in a number of different facets: physical and graphic ideation and design, 3D, VR and graphic modelling, image rendering, materials and manufacturing work, concept costing, prototyping, and marketing. I use design iteration as my own philosophy, constantly reflecting, and improving in all areas of life.

This created opportunities working at Rolls Royce, Alstom, Regeneration Clinic, The Venue Croydon and SPARCA AOS, working in design, and marketing, developing a better social media presence and company awareness for both SPARCA and the Regeneration Clinic as a Freelance Graphic and product designer. Additionally, I created a brand as an artist called JAIDoctRS, where I clean and customise footwear for clients. Developing a deep relationship with material fabrics and retaining fabric quality.

I'm a dedicated and charismatic professional, able to multitask, to work in and manage a team to meet a given goal on time and to a high standard. Constantly updating and tailoring tasks to suit the individual’s traits, taking into consideration how best to improve and provide ample time for work and socialising. I'm able and willing to go above and beyond in his work, able to quickly compartmentalise, to stay focused, grounded, and professional at work.

Jai Shah, MEng Product Design and Manufacture

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Footwear Customisation and Restoration Booth

Everyone uses shoes for jogging, for walking and even for sitting on the sofa. In doing so shoes fade, get dirty and wear away. There has been an increased footwear demand, especially around comfortable wear, causing companies to increase the price point of footwear to accumulate more capital. This has led to the growth of the custom and restoration market of the industry so everyday consumers can access unique styles, and clean footwear without falling into throw away culture.

I have developed a footwear customisation and restoration booth to fill a gap in the footwear customising and cleaning market. Taking the current condition of this market segment a step further, developing complex techniques from DIY to industrial level to improve suitability for a consumer market, providing equipment storage and a workspace for simple techniques, speeding up and improving the quality of all footwear cleaning and customising.

Looking first into the overall design, making the product modular suited for both professional environments and home life respectively. Researching complex techniques, such as sole whitening, UV disinfection and shoe forming and simple techniques such as scrubbing and brush-based painting, to determine how best to develop a product that can suit customising and cleaning techniques in a single unit. Developing the product composition and manufacture to improve techniques, and produce a street and luxury style aesthetic commonly associated with footwear brands.

My product is split into four main parts that can be magnetically aligned to a single product. The support structure is used to hold the weight of the other parts and provide storage for large equipment such as an iron to remove creases, spray cans and footwear before cleaning. The Storage box houses the more common simple equipment, such as paint and cleaning brushes, paint pots, spray protector and more, providing easy access for the fiddley attributes of customising and cleaning. The ice box, which provides a safe area for sole whitening, decreasing the sure time from 3hrs to 30mins, with the use of UV rays and a small refrigeration unit. This also helps disinfect and prep shoe for forming to one’s foot, all smart controlled via an app. The booth is where most the cleaning and customising is done, providing an expandable workstation, with air filtration, to remove any hazardous aerosol particles. This system includes a heating fan component, to dry footwear between steps of cleaning and customising, in an acrylic encased rotating display, with RGB back lighting to highlight the footwear on rotating display.

The product is available in two variations, urban and luxury, paying respect to the traditional and modern styles of footwear. The urban has a black brushed aluminium with true red, green, and blue accents split between the storage box, booth, and ice box. The luxury has a brushed chevron white dyed aluminium finish, and maroon, jewel green and dark blue accents.