Final Design Project

BrainStorming:

Since we were given a great amount of creative liberties with this project, there were many different options I could do for my final project.

Some Ideas Included:

1. CNC Cut wood project: For this I would use the CNC mill to cut out a design. This option would give me the ability to explore how to use the CNC machine as-well as give me a wide range of projects I could tackle. One of my favorite Ideas was a wooden rectangle with PITT engraved into it in the background and a panther in the foreground for my sister who attends PITT.
2. Designing another organizer for my room: Inspired by the last project, I would once again use the laser printer to create an organizer for myself this time. Since I have a-lot of space on the shelf in my closet, I was thinking I could make a large divider with shelves to sort miscellaneous objects and other things such as towels and larger coats. Another thing I thought about organizing was my PS4 setup under my desk so things are less scattered around and my cords are all organized. I am leaned away from this idea more because of its close similarity to our last project as well the fact that I would like to take a more artistic approach to this project.
3. Philadelphia: Given my intense following of Philadelphia sports teams and my love for the city in general, I wanted to design a project that could serve as maybe a wall decoration while depicting a great Philadelphia sports moment or landmark. I ended up tweaking this idea to go large scale and build a small scale city grid out of 8-10 fully constructed buildings . I then plan to add the letters of Philly on the front of six buildings in the front of the design. For all of this work I would use the laser cutter, however, I also could use the 3D printer to print more accurate and detailed models of certain roofs.

From these Ideas I ended up going with the Philadelphia theme because of its difficulty of execution being manageable and my want to stray into a more artistic approach.

Designing:

To begin my design, I first figured out the scale of what I wanted my project to be, and decided to create my city on a 32 by 20 wood sheet. These Dimensions fit well on-top of my dresser, which is where I plan to put the project. This size also gives me apt space to fully embrace the idea I had in my mind. Instead of sketching on pen and paper, I felt it was easier to trial and error on Rhino where all my measurements could be exact and I could quickly model exactly what the final product would look like. After playing around with different building sizes and spacing, I created a model which I felt looked interesting and eye catching while not to cluttered.

From my template, I used my dimensions to create the layout for the floor which all the pieces would fit into, as well as all the walls and ceilings of the buildings. For right now, I focused strictly on construction, ignoring aesthetics.

Aesthetics

Top decorate my final and make it more interesting I had a few ideas.

1. My first Idea was to 3D print some real models of rooftops from Philadelphia skyscrapers. I ended up shying away from this idea because the format of the models did not work with the Rhino client.
2. Secondly, I wanted to etch small features into the buildings to really drive home that they are buildings. This meant designing windows, doors, and possibly even walkways on the base to fully show the scale of the city as well as making it more cohesive.
3. Lastly, since I didn’t use the roof idea, I wanted to make sure anyone could tell that the city was Philadelphia. To do this I would etch the letters of “PHILLY” into the fronts of the front most buildings.

End Result:

These are all the parts construed and put together on rhino

Designing a Desk Organizer For a Client

Step One: Empathize Mode. Understand your clients needs and the context of your design challenge.

The design challenge is to create a desk organizer for a friend or housemate in need. My roommate, Kyle, often has a messy desk so I decided I would talk to him about his needs. I asked, do you often feel as though your desk is cluttered? what sort of items would you put in it? What do you hope this accomplishes for you. I learned that my roommate wants a location to put all of his protein supplements and medicines for allergies. He struggles staying on schedule with his medicine and wants a tab to keep himself on-top of things such as a day by day pill organizer. The big space consumer is his protein powder bucket which I will get the dimensions for when I interview him again tonight. He also wants a place to put his blender bottle when he is not using it which I can also tackle with the box.

Step Two: Define Mode. Define the right problem and the constraints.

The problem I have to solve here is creating an organizer for my roommate which can keep his pill schedule on track and organize all his health/supplement needs. Some of the issues with this is time. This is a complex task to complete so it will also take time to design in rhino. Another issue is material. Neither plywood nor cardboard are extremely strong so I have to make sure my structure is well supported. Lastly, space is an issue because my roommate doesn’t have a lot of space to hold a massive organizer so I need to make it fairly small.

Step Three: Ideate Mode. Brainstorm and generate ideas.

My basic idea theme is two large compartments and inside the second compartment smaller sections for other things. This is my first cardboard prototype of my final design as well as my final design. I originally had the compartments on the other-sides and the blender bottle was on a separate higher shelf but for simplicity and esthetic I changed these.

FINAL RESULT

Designing A Phone Movie Box

Part One: Design Phase

What is the fourth industrial revolution?

The fourth industrial revolution is a series of strides that emphasizes the use of technology to improve standards of life and solve modern day issues such as the overuse of fossil fuels. This differentiates from the first industrial revolution which focused on the discovery of the steam engine and it’s multiple uses as a means to the end of profit. This correlates to our design class because our end goal is to learn the basic design tools necessary for creating and executing projects which hopefully could better our lives in the future.

What I learned From Tom Chi’s Rapid Prototyping Talk : My biggest takeaways from the video were that the prototyping process was not used to get the design perfectly the first time, but to provide an insight on the future functionality of a project. In his second example, Tom talks about how his prototype, constructed by chopsticks, string, and hairties, allowed him to see that a product in-which you used your hands to interact with a tech world would be impractical and awkward. This prototype took him 45 minutes to construct and spared him and his team hundreds of hours working on a poor product. This video and knowledge can be applied to our class when prototyping new ideas. This will help us avoid spending unnecessary time working on projects when we can quickly create prototypes to illuminate our products flaws.