Curious Cats of Curiocity

Hi there! We will be journaling our progress of our project for Curiocity! Stay Tuned. By Beth, Hanako, Huan, Naomi & Sophia

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Week 14: Bloom is almost finished!

It’s Friday! The final day to complete our prototype, and it’s exciting as the prototype was almost finished. All that was left was too retest the water movement to open flowers, paint and seal watering can, and final stitching to design of flower. Sophia and Hanako were so impressed with what Beth, Huan and Sarah had come up with, and it showed that a few simple elements changed the shape of the flower into the orchid. 

However, while the design had finally come together, testing if the flower would open with new weight was a struggle. This came down to how much water would now be in the watering can to be able to push the flower open, which might need a few more tests on Tuesday next week to be 100% sure the flower will open. Beth, Sophia and Huan continued to test levels and distribution of weight on top of flower, and finally the flower opened, though to get the flower to close was much more trickier than we thought as some tests opening and closing worked, while others did not. Beth realised this was because one petal kept moving to one side, putting more weight on that side and making it get caught as the flower tried to come back down again. Sophia then suggested using ribbon to tie the petal in place. This proved to work, but Huan suggested more tests would need to be made just to be sure this will work the way we want it too. Evidently though, each team member now understands how each other works and also now works together to solve any problems, saying yes to suggestions and trying them our rather than saying no to them.  After these tests, we went back to the design of flower testing how it would open and close and if there was any final touches we could make. Hanako suggested covering up the black metal in the middle as it still looked unfinished and unappealing. To hide this, Beth suggested using the remainder of our purple material to simple place it over like a cloth. This was such a simple solution that worked really well. Evidently, as our team was closer to finishing and much more confident in our design when compared to Tuesday, each memeber worked more smoothly with each other for greater productiveness as worry was eased and changes were made. Now all thats left to do is design our exhibition layout and do our finally tests on the prototype!

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Week 14: Bringing everything together and Trying Again

It’s Thursday! After Tuesday’s struggles, we came to Thursday refreshed with a new outlook, ready to try again and stray away from any negativity. To do this and remain as productive as possible, the team split into two groups: Prototype design, and Branding. Huan and Beth were the prototype team, coming up with new ideas to shape and design the orchid. This proved incredibly productive as there was no longer 5 people trying to convey their ideas and which way to do it, but instead it was two people one with the visual vision (Beth) and one who has experience building projects (Huan). This allowed them to work together smoothly to achieve a new design, with a new way to use the materials that didn't look cheap. However, they realised something was missing, which was the middle of the orchid and how that could be design and shaped. They asked Sarah for help who was able to create and help the iconic darker middle of an orchid which took the shape to the next level. Evidently, having a smaller team proved very successful and allowed Sophia, who had been previously worried about time and design, to focus on branding and trust Huan and Beth to create what they believed to be the visual we were looking for-- not to mention have the prototype almost completely finished as they were able to work without constant comments and distraction from the team. 

The branding team were Sophia, Hanako and Naomi. New text were written for the handbook, posters and brochures where design had to be completed today in order to be sent and printed on time. This led to spending the entirety of Thursday working towards creating a brand we believed suited our idea and vision. It also allowed new skills to be learnt in InDesign, as after Naomi had to leave for work, Sophia spent the entire afternoon formatting, changing and adding new elements into the handbook. The feedback from last week was also taken on board to give a much more structured yet floral look to the design which perfectly fitted our branding. Hanako also created social media mock ups, and brochure design as well as took the time to help Sophia in finishing the handbook. This was a very productive team and ultimately led to completion of all printed and branding collateral to be completed on time.

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Week 14: The Process of designing our Orchid

It’s the FINAL WEEK! This Monday and Tuesday saw the beginning of constructing the flower, finding the shape and testing weight. Sarah joined us in the morning with an umbrella so we could play around with material and shape the flower as well as give other ideas to help us as we were in a bit of a rut trying to design the flower as no one in our team had this expertise. This was extremely helpful for Beth and Huan who realised we could use the material and clips on the umbrella to test how to attach our own material to the structure. 

Beth, Sophia and Huan began constructing the materials together and how they could be shaped. We decided to scrap the wire for the bigger petals as it became too malleable and turned instead to tubing to create the shape on the umbrella. Then using white tablecloth stretch material, we tested opening and closing of the orchid with water, which worked very well, however this was only one petal but we were confident with our shapes created by Huan. 

Tuesday was a very exhaustive day, but gave a very clear, eye opening realisation in how to design our orchid and why some elements were not coming together as we pleased. Sophia and Beth shaped the skinnier petals, finding it very easy, but as Hanako arrived and Huan came back from painting our stem, we realised designing the bigger petals was going to be harder than we thought. We kept going back and forth in how we could layer material, with Naomi suggesting we just make it clear mesh, and Hanako suggesting having it all the one colour. We decided to test out Naomi’s version as it seemed to be the idea that would not put extra weight on the structure as opening of the flower was still a great concern.  With one big petal and other smaller petals constructed, it was time to test, but it was a very windy day which did not work in our favour causing a bit of stress amongst the group if we would finish in time. Sarah joined us to see if it the mechanisms still worked, and unfortunately they did not as the design was restricting movement and the shape did not look like an orchid. It was evident Sophia became more worried, but Naomi reassured that there were still days left to rethink our approach to the petals. This reassurance was exactly what the team needed to help ease worry and calm down and take a step beck from the project to rethink the design.  After a long day, our final meeting with Sarah and Sabrina, and guest Thom occurred which was very helpful towards our branding. After last week, the team was still unsure exactly what our brand wanted to be. Responsible for branding of our handbook, Naomi designed a handbook with colours of purple and italic writing. From this, we received some crucial feedback that reshaped our brand focus as responses to this branding was the text might come across as ‘spa’ like, and purple background could look messy and hard to read. This was very useful and a great lesson for how branding works, with Sarah stating think of our exhibition as it’s own universe, where everything in our space is so specific to our world and idea we have created. Keeping this in mind, Thom further suggested that our handbook not be so text-heavy, but instead it should romance the idea. This was really interesting for Sophia to hear, as she was so used to writing really focused, information heavy material to help convey the idea, so it was now about changing that mindset to suit and sell the idea to entice our client to want to know more about it and really buy into it. 

Photography by Hanako Chua

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Week 13: Understanding our Materials…

This week also saw having half hour meetings with Sarah and Sabrina, whose main feedback was how calm the opening of the flower was. This led to a discussion on materials as when working and attempting to construct our shape, Huan, Beth and Sophia were stuck...nothing seemed to look right and Sophia especially started to feel pressure to make the project look visual appealing, which with the materials we had, was not something she was confident we could achieve. So the team then planned a spotlight trip before the next week looking at material like organza, and even thinking more about shape of flower. Beth was also worried about how much material we could place on the structure, as it might be too heavy to open, or even too heavy to close. The next discussion followed Branding. Our project juxtaposes against the beautifulness of an orchid with the mechanical nature of opening. Beth, Huan and Sophia were thinking of using harsh lines to portray mechanics and the use of flowers and light colours, however this translated as quite gimmicky and messy as the brand looked it was all over the place. Sarah then suggested focusing on the calm nature which opened a new area of discussion but seemed to match the appeal and reaction we were going for. There is still a lot to do, but now the team is feeling more confident the prototype works, the worry Sophia and Beth have, as well as branding concerns can be focused on in the next week. We’re almost at the finish line. 

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Week 13: The Prototype Works!

After worry from last week, this week was a huge success and the team is now confident that our project will work and be what we want it to be. This week was all about confirming our water levels which took a while but hopefully once we replace the bucket to a watering can it will be the same levels of water. Now it’s time to discuss materials....Let’s hope the prototype will open when there is more weight!

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Week 12 Prototype Building and Realisation

This week we got to piece together our prototype to test if our idea work and... YES it did! well most of it. Our idea using water between two different objects worked really well, however it was trying to push the umbrella out and open that failed. We realised this was because the metal of the umbrella was getting too heavy for something to help push it open despite the number of foam balls we used. While we were worried if the flower would then actually be able to open, it was really good that we had this tested out early so we could make changes and have a discussion on what our next steps would be and also begin discussion as to what our full design will look like. As a team we worked through using weights, adding more water, where Human suggested we bolt the umbrella and its stem to the base of the pipe in our next week building meeting. The workshops support team also said this would work really well to help the flower open and not be weighed down... but also meant we need to think more about materials bought if they would be heavy or not. 

We also noticed that next time to bring a bucket to truly confirm water volume needed before investing in a watering can that way we can find a watering can of exact size so we do not overfill both objects where water is required.

Although we all worked as a team, during our meeting with Sarah and Sabrina, it was obvious that working on all the same project parts was actually more unproductive, as ideas and view were likely to cause greater clashes as so many people were working on the one part. For example we spent time working on the prototype, where Huan and Sophia would talk back and forth about how the prototype will work, Beth would control the water ad Hanako would tape everything together, because we were all involved in this digital aspects and handbook and brochure design and written elements were left behind, resulting in our team falling a bit behind our initial timeline. Therefore after this meeting, we all agreed that each aspect of the project would be broken up between each person and what they were good at and preferred to do, to be majority completed by our next meeting with Sarah and Sabrina. In doing so, while we would take into account others opinions and thoughts, we were able to move one quickly and add changes as we all led our own project aspects allocated. As a result, if most elements are draft ready by our next meeting, our team should be on track and even ahead of initial timeline. 

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Week 12 Workshop: Building the Prototype

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Workshop 11: Our Project is coming together, new ideas and more!

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Workshop 11: Our Project is coming together, new ideas and more!

This week the Bloom team attended a workshop to get some expert advice on how to build our project prototype. and wow, this was one of the most helpful workshops we have ever attended, as the workshop team provided clarity and advice in exactly how our project could be build and displayed. But with this new advice meant changes needed to be made to our handbook and brochure information. 

To begin, Beth brought the science aspect to our project to make it more prominent (something the client was looking for where we had pushed the science aspect aside believing showcasing a flower blooming was science enough-- luckily Beth reapplied this was not enough, and decided to have the actual interaction as science based on the capillary action of flowers). Beth suggested using water to open the flower, which Acer, our workshop expert stated we could use water flower from one area into something that pushed the flower up to bloom. He explained we wouldn't be taking away from a physical interaction by making it more that the audience would have to do something even more controlling to help the flower open. This led to the idea that there would be a tube of water on one end leading to the flower, where on the end of this tube will be a watering can, filled with water, that would be lifted onto a platform to let the water flow through the tube and fill up the flower platform, pushing the water up and making it bloom. To our team, this presented as the most exciting evolution of our project, initially a flower wall, to a standalone interaction that we believe as more artistic, scientific and with greater audience involvement. 

Through with this, a new material list needed to be made and further thinking about the logistics of using water in our interaction, such as would the watering can be too heavy to lift, are materials durable, and will this suit the shape of our design. Sophia was able to answer whether water would impact lift ability stating this could mean getting more people involved and emphasising the social aspect of the project. And if a child wanted to lift the water, their parent would be there for support, increasing the idea of the curious parent and child. 

Following this, a final design of the full project look would need to be reconstructed, however this was something to be discussed once our first interaction of the prototype was completed to make sure this new idea and interaction worked. 

And if it does, this is very exciting and innovative for Bloom AND Curiocity. 

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Our Prototype structure is coming together!

This week, during our break it, we all began sourcing materials to build our prototype. Naomi sought out fabric to try and test, while Beth discovered how we could reverse the umbrella to suit our designs. We realised we would have to do a few iterations of the prototype so we made sure anything we bought could accomodate that but not be exuberant with heaps of materials wasted. Our team cannot wait to start piecing Bloom together, where we all agree it might be better to construct the mechanisms separately to the fabric design. We shall see if that works. 

Our handbook and brochure to deliver to audiences and the Curiocity team has also been created and written by Sophia and Beth, where all it needs is the design elements to suit our project theme and client colours, by Naomi and Hanako. 

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Workshop 10: Our display, finishing up our milestone and new project name.

First things first, our new project name is BLOOM, as we felt it perfectly encapsulated our idea. 

This week we saw a discussion around our prototype and our exhibition display which was very exciting as we began to see it all come together. 

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Workshop 9: Thom visited us and provided feedback to our idea + a bit of conflict. 

This week was a tough one. At the end of workshop 8, our team discussed each bringing in a visual on what we thought our flower wall will look like, because we knew what our flowers would look like and how they would work, but we couldn't visualise the bigger picture. This led to many different designs and ultimately questioning whether our flower wall was exactly what we were looking for or if the interaction could be something entirely different. Our team member Sophia, struggled a lot this week as when she designed how she thought the flower wall to look, she saw it as unappealing and not the ‘instagrammable’ image we were all hoping for. On the other hand, Naomi designed a visual unique piece but questions were raised about how the wall would limit interactions, such as how tall would a person be to be able to interact with the wall. This led to Huan coming up with a really simplified version of our flower wall, and bringing it back to the ground and more of a garden style where big and small interactions of the flowers would be coming out of the ground, allowing for audiences to move around. 

While still thinking of this idea, Beth and Sophia were tasked with presenting our idea to Thom, our guest tutor and the entire class for feedback. This proved incredibly valuable, as Thom made the point to go back to our core idea and why we wanted to do this, as he could see the form in terms of visuals and interactions, but also explained the importance of brining together the content and the reasons behind our project. He also made the mention of bring nature back to the urban space and commented on human impact to our environment, in terms of how South-east Queensland Flora is being overtaken by roses from engalnd or lavender from France. This comment was something o think about for our project form and what it might mean to the audience and purpose of why we were doing it in the first place. Our answer to this why, was simply to showcase Brisbane flora, however listening to other teams purposes, Beth was worried that our “why” was not impactful enough. As a result, a lengthy discussion, filled with stress and some arguments occurred. 

Our group discussed out why, looking to Thom’s comments on human impact. Huan suggested environmental impact and using materials that wouldn't harm the environment, and while this was a good suggestion, it was more focused towards form rather than the content we wanted to showcase. Beth suggested our mechanical flowers were making a comment to bringing nature back to urban spaces, or bringing forgot pieces of landscape back to the area around us. But from this, Sophia argued if we were bringing nature back, should our flowers be mechanical or should they be real. Finally, Hanako, who was listening intently to all suggestion, brought the team back together through a pep-talk stating our idea was always to bring great interactions to a location, make it Brisbane specific and to showcase the flora of Brisbane. She explained our purpose was to give a fun, exciting interaction and that it didn't have to go any further than that to make it a deep purpose. She also said that we might be worried because a lot of groups in our workshop had projects to do with climate change and starlight foundation where the purpose of their project would be deep, whereas Curiocity purpose was to have exciting interaction for the curious mind. She finally concluded that our project could have implicit meaning about the landscape and urban spaces becoming more industrial, but she explained that could be up to the own viewers interpretation, while our role would be to facilitate an interaction that is engaging, colourful, unique and exciting for Curiocity. Hanako really brought the team back together, and resolved the conflict we all faced to now be put back on track with our idea, where the only things left to discuss was whether we wanted to stick with our wall or have our flowers coming our from the ground, AND to discuss our display at the final exhibition. 

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Workshop 8: Moving forward from client’s feedback

This week we got greater confidence in our idea! Sophia and Beth met with Chris from Curiocity and did an elevator pitch to him about our idea. He seem really happy with it and loved the ‘instagrammable’ element. However, he didn't really offer much feedback on what he would change about the idea compared to other groups feedback, rather to make it a highly tangible interaction with different types of interactions. While we loved that he did not changed our core idea of flowers that opened up mechanically, we were worried this might not have been a good thing as other groups in the meeting got a range of feedback in what they should change about the idea or provide more clarity. We thought this could mean that our idea was too simple and wouldn't have a great impact, or that he simply really loved the idea and could not find too many faults in it. Either way, he provided valuable feedback and even greater insight into what he was looking for in the projects... such as making it incredibly interactive and ‘instagrammable’, which we will make sure to include moving forward in designing our prototype. 

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Workshop 5: A close up of our Low-fidelity prototype

After much worry and discussion how to prototype our idea of a flower wall with mechanical flowers that ‘bloom’ when interacted with, we have a low fidelity prototype made by Huan, from paper, sticky notes and a marker pen. This provided clarity and elimintated worry we had in our project with how our flowers would work, seeing that it could be as simple as we needed it to be, allowing for greater feasibility and project success. We now understand what materials we could also use, such as those flimsy enough to move around but also strong enough like steel, similar to that of an inside of an umbrella, to open and close the flowers. 

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Workshop 5: Our Idea and The Design!

We have decided on a Flower-wall at Brisbane Powerhouse, along the brick wall closest to entrance! As can be seen by this photo, the bigger flowers will be mechanically interacted with to mimic a flower blooming, while the smaller flowers can be interacted by feeling different textures or different movements.. This will be done by standing on a sensor or pressure point to open up a flower, or pulling a lever. Fiberoptic lights will illuminate the project at night, to be glowing from a distance as audience become intrigued to move closer to it. In the day, it becomes an interaction for all audience where they can touch, smell and control whether the flowers open up or not. The best part, this is all Brisbane-specific and location specific mirroring and continuing the flora from New Farm park and around Brisbane. Flowers chosen are bright, colourful, and  Brisbane and Australian specific to be a one of a kind installation. We cannot wait for you to see the final outcome and design. 

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Workshop 4: Time to prototype!

This week we looked at Low-fidelity prototyping and how that could change towards high fidelity. Our biggest hurdles we discovered again was materials, we discussed from our research about fibreglass, steel structures and even paper materials. As we began discussing our high-fidelity prototype, we realised interactive technology and motion sensors to open the flowers up would be more difficult than we initially thought. However, through our low-fidelity prototype, we realised we could make our project more simple rather than complex trying to go for world-class technology, where our team member Huan discovered flowers can bloom through a reverse-umbrella type technology and pully system. From this, we discovered importance of keeping the project simple and not going over the top to make it complex as that could result in lower feasibility and greater difficulties where the idea and purpose of project in the exciting interactions could become lost. Also, in assigning roles for what we would need to research, it would be important to look at more umbrella-like mechanisms that have been used in installations globally, as well as research YouTube videos to learn how we could build this ourselves. Other roles we have discovered to focus on going forward is who would be in charge of prototyping and how prototyping both digitally and physically. Based on previous expertise, we decided Huan and Naomi to be leaders in prototyping, helping the group come together to create prototypes. 

In this workshop we also realised our exact target audience experience. As our project would be highly instagrammable, being a flower wall of sorts with brights colours and aesthetics, the desirable audience for these interactions were high school students, university students and those under the age of 30, where aesthetics and being part of something cool and unique on their feed will become the driving force to visit the installation. High school students are also highly curious individuals who like to be challenged or to interact with things that stimulate their mind. In a similar fashion, children and families become our primary audience as children are high curious, eager to touch and play to figure out what something is and does, where once solved become excited. They also are often with an excitable mum or dad that wants to help them develop, open their minds and be curious as curiosity helps with brain development to become critical thinkers and thrive academically. Therefore, going forward, if we focus our interactions to these audiences desires and needs, we will more successful in our interaction and engagement as we are tailoring the expected experience to them.

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 Workshop 3: Experience Mapping and choosing our project

This week we narrowed our two ideas (Flower wall and a physical polypore experience) where we were tasked to develop a SWOT analysis for both ideas to truely narrow down feasibility of project and work out whether this project has more strengths, and how to combat any threats we may face. 

We discovered we loved both our ideas, and could come up with many strengths, but out major threats and weaknesses were thinking of materials to use and how to construct our projects as we had no expertise in these areas, and it would come down to a lot of research undertaken in whether these projects could work. We became stuck on our Polysphere idea, as it would become really technical when creating jagged shapes in ground to become an image as you move around it, where different heights, views and  if people would walk around it would come into play to find the image, eventually becoming difficult to think how exactly a project like this would suit the audience experience and engagement. From this, we turned to our Flower idea, where we realised our team loved the idea of a flower wall to bring brightness to Brisbane market goers at Brisbane powerhouse. We discovered it as a one of a kind interaction in Brisbane that suited Curiocity’s provocation more closely in delivering art and science together as it was would be a visual exciting and highly interactive piece. 

However just to be sure of our initial thoughts on which idea would be better suited to our client and audiences, we conducted an experience map. Evidently, our Flora map had a much more detailed and greater audience interaction that we discovered compared to our polysphere project where interaction ended on seeing the image. 

From this we realised our Flower wall idea was the strongest, even though extensive research would need to be undertaken to truely understand project feasibility, audience interaction and whether materials chosen would be able to be manageable to the point where the project would run itself.