Functionality And Form

Today the First Wave pack met with local Nordic skier and Coach Dave Paarlberg-Kvam. Dave is not only the coach at a local high school but also organizes a citizen’s team in the area. All in all, Dave has been skiing for 16 years and has been roller skiing for 8. He is the perfect person to review our bag. When asked how he carries his equipment, Dave said he usually throws everything he can into multiple bags. He sees kids having more of a problem with this because they don’t know what kind of bag to get that will be able to hold all the equipment. According to Dave, Some features to look for in choosing a bag to use is it has to be big enough, and it has to hold skis, boots and a change of cloths for after. On a typical training session Dave uses at least three bags. After being introduced to our prototype Dave made the following suggestions: we should put something on the bottom to hold the skis down from wiggling all over the place. He thinks if you ever needed to travel with ski equipment, this would be the bag to use. He suggested we make sure the connections are tight. You don’t want everything to be flopping around. Tight and compact is the way to go. Dave is not only a skier but an artist, so we asked him how he thought the bag looked. His comments were “I like the pattern and material changes. You used some snazzy materials.” he said we should try to blend in the schools athletic mascot into the design. The Blue Streak is a symbol of motion and that’s what we are trying to get at with the bag. He then gave us some techniques to try to get that “Blue Streak” look into our bag. The team is thankful Dave was able to make it in to see our work in progress and give us feed back. It’s always good to have a fresh set of eyes look at our work and give us their thoughts.