Harry Bushell

Design Portfolio

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Week 13 - Capstone DES302

Finished. Submitted. Something that I’ve looked forward to for so long but also dreaded has come and gone! Everything is handed in and now my mind is free! I leave for China tomorrow, and am finally able to fully embrase the excitement of a World Cup opportunity. My mind has switched focus and the fact that I get to do what I love on an international stage is finally sinking in. This weeks main focus was around ensuring all of my deliverables were finished and ready to hand in. Outside of Uni, we had our last week of training and I created some great bonds with people that I hope will continue for a long time! The uncertainty of the future has been put on hold as living in the now and embracing what I have in front of me has really put my mind at ease, and allowed me to properly enjoy company and get fizzing for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Wikimedia Commons. (2004). Jingjiang.JPEG. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jingjiang.JPEG

The core context of this week was ensuring I had everything done on time. This was simple in principle, but with my constant desire to improve and change stuff, knowing when to stop and accept that something was done was a struggle. Thankfully, having a to-do list ensured that by ticking off little parts of each deliverable, I could figure out when something was done and also plan accordingly with the time I had left. I had also finished a few of the deliverables in the previous few weeks, meaning that all that was left was my visual summary and to polish and print the remaining deliverables. 

This week taught me a lot about myself. I’m extremely proud of the work I’ve produced and what I’ve been able to achieve this semester, as well as the determination and time management I’ve had to get everything done 2 weeks early. Planning was such a crucial tool for this project, and I think I set myself up to succeed by planning early and realistically, meaning that there wasn’t really a point in this project that I was overwhelmed by stress. However, when all is said and done I am incredibly drained and will be sleeping for many hours to recover from post capstone burn out. Roll on the World Cup!

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Week 12 DES302 Capstone

One week to go… what a fantastic journey it has been so far! Going into week 13 is well and truly the home stretch. This week was solid, I got practically everything on my to-do list done and made some progress on what I had planned for next week already! Unfortunately, I’m struggling to know when enough is enough. I’m constantly thinking of new ideas and ways to change or improve what I’ve done, which is excellent when in the ideating phase but not so good when there is a week to go. I need to learn when enough is enough and that even though I think I can make something better, I need to shift my priorities to ensure everything is done for the headline. I’m still struggling with the sensation that I can’t get away from this project, but only a week to go before it’s just the report I need to worry about! Outside of Uni, We’ve got a week of training left and final preparations before we fly out to China, which is wildly exciting! It’s hard to fathom that it’s just a week away.

Going back to the reflection on my project, I’ll start with the context phase. Week 12 was focused on creating my final deliverable video - Recording, voicing, editing, sourcing, and all that jazz, finishing my casebook, touching up my packaging, sorting my final prints for my prototypes, and further working on my visual summary. This was a complete shift away from my comfort zone and threw me into a work world where I don’t feel the most confident (graphic design and aesthetic work). This is something I struggle with, as I know my strengths don’t lie in the artistic side of design, but I think being aware of my limits in this aspect is good, and I don’t hold myself to as high standards as I do with the other aspects of my work. This results in some work that might not look the prettiest, but I’m normally pretty confident with the actual content of what I’ve made.

Casebook Mock-up

The actions I took to address the context of this week were also pretty straightforward. For my video, I collected testing and urban space footage that I had taken over the last few months, combined it with a storytelling aspect based around the unifying power of football through a few stock videos and personal football footage, spoke over the video to address the issue and how my solution works, and put it all together on DaVinci Resolve. I spoke on the restrictions of DaVinci last week, so I won’t comment on it again. In terms of packaging, I added multiple other languages to the back of my packaged model to better emulate a market-ready product. For the 3D printing part, I attempted to print a few of model 6 to attach to a boot and take photos of, but the FabLab has been packed all week, and they haven’t got around to seeing my email yet. Hopefully, I can get this sorted out next week. For my casebook, I collated all of the research I had collected on sustainable practices in football, I commented on improvements around lighting, chemical use with fertilisers, different playing surfaces, better use of space, and a few local examples. This was pretty enjoyable to create, as a lot of the research I had done earlier in this project and for other projects. 

This resulted in what felt like a very productive week, and leaves me with only 2 deliverables to finish in week 12 - the visual summary and presentation. Along with this, the deliverables I did finish this week I’m pretty proud of, although I think it’s clear that my strengths lie in prototyping - which are the part of this project I’m most proud of. The others - the casebook, heroshots for ReDesign Submission, and the video, I’m also very happy with. I think with the time I’ve had and my limited graphical skills, they are both at a standard that I believe is good.

Again, I think this week has reinforced the importance of planning. My Gantt chart and to-do list were created at the start of this assignment just to tick off a section of a rubric, but now I think it’s been the MVP of this project. Being able to ground myself back into what needs focus and setting my own deadlines has been so important and has meant that I’ve never really felt horrifically stressed or overwhelmed with what is the most important assignment I’ve ever done. Despite this, coming to the end of this journey has also shown me how much I’m going to miss this part of my life. I never really thought past going to university, and the fact that I have a week of it left has put me in a position of insecurity that I haven’t experienced before. This has left me in a bit of an emotional limbo if I’m honest. There’s days where I’m super excited about the opportunities in the future, but others where I crave stability. In the end, I'm just happy that I've made it this far with this project and University as a whole, and have survived a pandemic ridden degree! One week to go...

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Week 11 DES302 Capstone Blog

T-minus 15 days until the majority of my capstone work is due. While this is a horrifically frightening prospect, it will also be a monumental weight off of my shoulders. This assignment's requirement for personal self-motivation and work effort has been very close to the definition of stress (“a state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding circumstances.”). With this, I’m both excited and frightened for the next 2 and a bit weeks to pass. Week 11 involved many hours being put into work that has not always produced the best results. I’ll get into this more in the action section of this reflection. Outside of university, week 11 has been pretty action-packed! World Cup preparation is well and truly in full swing, as we trained twice this week and played a fairly frustrating game on Thursday night in horrific wind and rain. Along with this, I took part in interfaculty hockey on Saturday, which was extremely good fun, I haven’t played hockey for over 5 months now, and I’ve missed the sport a lot, so getting back on the turf for a fun and sociable event was like free therapy. However, my glutes and back are paying the price for not playing for so long! This, however, did mean that Saturday was a write-off, and no work was achieved on a day I originally planned to spend working through my casebook. In all honesty, I’m completely fine with catching up on the hours missed because that hockey tournament was so needed - a mental break swapped with physical work.

Week 11 focused mostly on the Plan for Impact phase of the Design for Conservation (D4C) methodology. This means that my project has majoritively shifted out of the prototyping work from the Propose and Validate phase and moved into the phase more focused on polishing and promoting my work. With this, a lot of what I planned for week 11 focused on making things look nice, completing planning templates, and working on my other deliverables - the visual summary, my casebook, and my video. 

In terms of how I achieved these goals, I printed and tested my final 3D model, began to build my video off of the structure created in week 10, completed all of the remaining Plan for Impact D4C templates, created mapped mock-up map images highlighting available areas for impact, researched into two local pitches and documented how they could be improved both performance wise and sustainability wise, and finalised my organic prototype by packaging and photographing the finished prototypes. After printing and testing 3D model 6, the slightly deeper shelf in the shell allows the spiral piece to fit flush and spin with less resistance. Along with this, the resized thread on top of the stud fits perfectly with a pair of football boots and holds enough tension to be screwed in and out of the boot. Unfortunately, the spiral piece for Model 6 broke due to a printing error, so the spiral from Model 5 was used for testing. A new spiral piece will be printed soon to complete model 6. Luckily, the spiral piece is relatively unchanged for model 6, and the main innovation for this model was the thread, which worked as intended. Constructing the video mostly focused on collecting, cutting, and organizing footage shot by myself and from stock footage. For this, I’m using DaVinci Resolve, as I feel comfortable and confident using it, and have DaVinci experience through the workforce as well as previous classes. The only issues I have with DaVinci come from its struggle with multiple media pieces on one timeline, as it often lags when displaying the video, leading to uncertainty with some cuts and edits. The map mock-up images were created to display the statistic “Auckland Council indicates that in 2016/17, green space accounted for 47% of the urban area”. This was the most recent statistic I could find for Auckland's urban green space percentage and also provided a great sample size for areas of impact for my project. The local pitches I looked into were Madills Farm and Taharoto Park, as they are the two pitches I’ve spent the most time at in Auckland and the two I have the best understanding of in terms of how they are run, etc. Finalising my organic models was extremely rewarding personally, as I was able to see my prototype in a finished and polished form, creating something that I wanted to share and am very proud of.

The learnings from Week 11 are predominantly around the importance of taking a break. This was the first weekend I’ve not had football all day Saturday since February. With this, I planned to work on my project all of Saturday, but luckily, hockey came along and filled the day. Although it meant another Saturday not spent on my capstone, I realised that I really need sport on Saturdays. Although they don’t offer a stereotypical break, they do offer time away from this project and a very welcomed mental distraction. Plus, the benefits of physical activity. I’ve learnt that these distractions are so important for my own wellbeing, and while my legs are absolutely knackered today, my cup is full, and I’ve got the mental energy to keep going for a few more weeks.

Here are some of the hero shots I took this week, as well as the map graphic!!

  

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Week 10 DES302 Capstone

Week 10

We are so back. This week has continued to progress very well, although I can feel myself getting close to burning out (praying that doesn’t happen until I’ve submitted everything in 3 weeks 🙏). Week 10 was an incredibly important week on my Gantt Chart, with practically everything overlapping from all of the design phases. With that, I knew it would be a bit of a grind, but I managed to get the majority of my weekly to-do list done! However, the amount of deliverables we have is a bit mental,  I have to have everything done 2 weeks earlier than everyone else due to the FISU World Cup, which has resulted in a lot of work. Although I think I'm on top of it, which is nice! All of my prototypes are now done, and I'm starting the process of photographing and documenting them for the ReDesign Submission and my final reports. I am also working on creating 3 different reports for the project, one is a visual summary of my process, one is a written summary (DES302), and one is a casebook about sustainability in football. Along with this I have to create an advertisement video for my project, and film a 10 minute presentation. Thankfully, I managed to get all of these underway in week 10, and hope that the remaining 3 weeks continue to be productive. However, the amount of different things to focus on has only heightened the sensation of stalking from this project. I know myself and my peers are struggling to move our heads away from our work at any point, and guilt seems to run riot whenever work isn’t being done. Even laying in bed late at night after a productive day carries a grey cloud. This project has captured my mind in both good and bad ways. I’ve loved working on something I’m passionate about, and I thoroughly enjoyed prototyping and testing something that’s solely my creation. But my mind is also never free of this project, and moments of mental silence are few and far between.    

CARL is back to structure this week’s blog, yay! Week 10’s context was focused on a bit of everything, I set out hoping to polish and finalise my prototypes, decide on a logo, begin to structure my video, visit, photograph, and document local urban spaces, create packaging designs, and create my urban space mock-up images. This carried context over multiple deliverables, which ensured I had everything started and ready to develop and finish over the next 3 weeks.

My actions to ensure that this context was met were fairly straightforward. For finalising my prototypes, I decided on a final composition for my seed mix and created 18 studs, 6x 15mm and 12x 13mm. This ensured that I could both have a total stud set on a boot and a 12 stud set for use in packaging and hero shots. Along with this, I created my final 3D model (model 6), which has been printed and will be picked up in week 11. Model 6 has minimal mechanical changes to model 5 due to the mechanical success of model 5 during testing. This means that Model 6 shouldn’t require much testing at all, as the only significant changes come in the top thread size and the shelf within the stud, both of which shouldn’t affect the mechanics in any way. Deciding on a logo was pretty simple, I asked a few peers for their opinions on my drafts and chose the one that received the most love. I then carried this onto packaging, which I modelled off of currently existing stud packaging. Structuring my video was a bit more of a struggle, I initially went all in on creating a video about my message rather than my product, but after a discussion with Gabi, this was pivoted to more of an advertisement-style video structure for my project. After this, I created a script and gathered precedents and footage for my final video. Visiting my local green urban spaces was quite enjoyable! Although some were a lot smaller than I realised, and so weren’t documented due to the limited space available for my project. Despite this, these spaces could still be utilised by way of much smaller events - like a football juggling contest or something. I captured photographs and video footage of my chosen 3 urban spaces and used this media to create mock-up images of how these spaces could appear during and after my project.

All of this resulted in a week that concluded the prototyping (propose and validate) phase, which I’m personally a little gutted about, as this is by far my favourite part of design with any project. Regardless, It’s good to have functioning prototypes done and ready for documentation as we move into the final two stages of my design process, the plan for impact phase and the deploy sustainably phase. It also resulted in a whole lot of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff. Trying to work on all of these different deliverables at once has made my head a bit jumbled, and I keep losing track of what I’m doing by accidentally being distracted by a separate part of this project. Despite this, I’ve been quite lucky that the distractions still seem to benefit my project as a whole, as work is still being done.

This week has shown me near to my limits, and the remaining three weeks will continue to push this boundary. I’m incredibly proud of the work I’ve produced so far, but wish I could look past the looming due date and be excited about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but I find it difficult to be excited about something that also signals the end of an enchanting journey. I’ve also learnt that what I’ve created and the vision I have luckily captured the interest of my stream project partners, who provided positive and much-needed reassurance. 

Here are some of my mock-up urban space photos, the packaging I’ve begun to work on, and model 6.  

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Week 9 DES302 Capstone

Week 9

First week back after the ‘break’, and it’s been another solid week of productivity! Although the main thing I set out to achieve at the start of the week was back seated for next week, everything else I set out to achieve went very well. The week started with further remote working, and Monday was mainly spent creating a presentation for the pitch practice we had planned as a class for Thursday, as well as further logo and marketing work. On Tuesday I travelled back to Auckland, as I was in Christchurch for a representative hockey tournament. Then, the rest of the week was spent testing my new 3D print, testing my organic models, and planning pitch mock-ups. From these tests, I continued to iterate my prototypes, which stuck to my Gantt chart well. Outside of University, my overall health is good! Being productive over the break has put me in a solid mental place where I’m happy with my progress and feel that the workload I have coming will be manageable. Furthermore, we began our World Cup campaign and played our first friendly game on Thursday night while training on Tuesday and Saturday. Being surrounded by my best mates doing the activities I love is an excellent form of personal therapy and allows my mind to escape from the encapsulation of a capstone project.

The context of this week has been discussed accidentally in the introduction, so CARL is well and truly underway. Going straight into the action and results, this week had more testing and iterating (it’s becoming a bit of a repetition sorry). Once back in Auckland, I got straight into testing both of my prototypes! I started with my 3D print of model 4, which worked wonderfully and honestly made my day. I removed the cap (which had some issues with the thread but we move) and filled the stud with my seedmix. Once the initial leak test was passed, and the seeds stayed in the sealed system, I tested the twist mechanics and they worked wonderfully! With each twist a few seeds were transported through the stud and out of the bottom, exactly as I had planned. This proved that the new spiral design and shell both created a sealed system and a functioning one. This meant that model 5 didn’t need much in terms of iteration here. The major changes to model 5 came with a newly designed stud cap. Moving away from a screw top and instead focusing on a tightly fitting cap to close off the model. With this, there have also been cut outs incorporated to ensure that the stud can be refilled without the need of removing the lower shell, thus streamlining the refilling process further and removing the need for threads, reducing the risk of damage or accidental loss of the lower portion of the stud. Once the stud is assembled, glue can be used if needed to ensure that the cap and shell aren't separated, although from previous tests I feel that the tightness of the print should be enough. The shell remained unchanged apart from removing the outer thread, and the spiral mechanic had it’s support changed from a cross to a straight rectangle to increase space for refilling the stud and to reduce materials used. 

In terms of my organic stud models, the results after testing mix 2 were extremely promising. I spent 15 minutes running on slightly damp grass with the boots on, doing directional cuts and other movements common with a game of football, and as seen above, the studs more or less degraded, but not until around the 15 minute mark. This is exactly what I wanted after mix 1s durability being too low. a 15-20 minute lifespan is perfect for allowing enough time for a game to flow, while also ensuring that the studs break down enough to plant a meaningful amount of mix throughout the game. A 15 - 20 minute life span allows roughly 5-6 breaks within a game to replace the studs, which for an exhibition / event game is perfectly reasonable. With this, I think the mixture ratio for mix 2 is exactly what I wanted, and will be closely followed for the next mix (presentation mix). 

Alongside the prototyping process, there was a bit of planning here and there, primarily focused on the other deliverables outside of my prototypes. This included video structure and planning for our video deliverable, mock-up image planning for my casebook, and further structure work for my visual summary.     

From all of this, I continued to learn and improve with 3D modelling and 3D printing, as well as learning that nothing is ever going to be perfect, and I need to be ok with leaving certain parts of this project as they are in order to progress in other areas. I have thoroughly enjoyed the prototyping and testing period of this project, but as the Gantt chart plan for prototyping time is coming to an end, I need to move on from this side of the project and focus on the other deliverables. This is difficult for me as I’m moving away from working with things I’m confident with, to things I’m not. However, I’m aware of my struggles with the graphical side of design and will try my best to chuck myself in the deep end, and not be scared to fail. I’m hoping that I can ride the high of prototyping into this graphical journey and continue to be productive and to produce work that I’m proud of.

Here are some photos of model 5 and it’s renders :)

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Week 8 Capstone DES302

We are officially over halfway! As scary as a thought that is, I think my project and myself are both in good places. I have a clear vision for what I want to achieve, my prototypes are going well, and clear improvements are being made with each iteration. My report is also coming along as my project progresses, with the content presenting itself as it grows. Week 8 placed its focus on further iterating and prototyping, as well as the development of marketing tools and strategy. Due to being away for part of this week and the start of week 9, I knew that I had to get some physical prototypes done early in the week, as being away with hockey meant I wouldn’t have access to the tools available at the FabLab and home. With this in mind, planning and efficiency were crucial this week as I looked to shift my focus onto stuff I could do remotely, like marketing and research or working on the report. Knowing I was going away and planning accordingly to ensure I could still get work done has worked out surprisingly well, and although productivity has dropped a little bit, I still think I’ve got a solid amount of work done!

This week's reflection should be shorter than the novel I wrote last week. CARL is back once again to provide a needed reflection structure. Context-wise, I feel like I summed up a lot of it in the introduction. This week was split into two halves, with the first context focusing on further iterating and prototyping, while the other was focused on remote work - creating logos, research and planning. 

Again I’m going to mix the actions and results part of CARL together as they are very similar for this week. For the first half of the week, the actions focused heavily on creating further prototypes. To start with, I created a new seedshell mix. Using the same base materials as the previous mix, I increased the compost clay ratio from 5:1 to 3:1, hopefully increasing the durability of the mix when in contact with soil and moisture. I then followed the same method as mix one, by slicing up the clay into smaller pieces and mixing it in with the seeds and compost by hand. This process was repeated until I had a solid ball of materials that could be used with my stud mold. I then followed the same process as before, using a small flat tool from the multitool to compact parts of the mixture into the mold. My mold had a solid hold on the aluminium cores at the bottom, allowing me to stuff in the mixture around the core and ensure that the mix is nice and compact in order for the clay to do its thing and hold solid. Once I was satisfied that no more mixture could fit in the mold, I flattened down the top of the mold as much as possible and removed any excess mixture for later use. The finished prototypes look much the same as the first batch. However, I'm hoping that by increasing the compost-clay ratio that they will last longer when tested. I will also allow for a longer drying period to see if that accommodates greater results. One thing I have noticed is on some of the prototypes, the clay compost split is visible, and this could be a contributing factor to the low durability. If this is the case after testing, the next batch will have to use finer pieces of clay, meaning I'll probably end up cutting them into much smaller pieces in order to negate the obvious separation between the materials and create what is hopefully a stronger mixture. The testing for this new mix will begin as soon as I am home, and hopefully, within the next couple of weeks, I will have a mixture that performs the way I want it to. Along with this, I was able to 3D print my 4th 3D model of the mechanical stud idea. 3D model 4 was printed at a 1.5x scale rather than the 3x scale used in the previous print. This was done for three reasons: firstly, to test if the parts would be strong enough at a much smaller size, secondly to decrease the printing time, and thirdly to reduce the materials used. The model assembles well, although the fit is still quite tight, so the threaded part of the model will still need further refinement. The spiral piece fits much closer to the core, reducing the gap issues around the tip of the previous model. Unfortunately, due to time restraints, I couldn’t test this model during the week, but like with the organic model, I will be testing as soon as I’m home. 

The second half of the week focused on stuff that can be done remotely. I began market research and drafting some logos, as well as adding a lot of content to my DES302 documentation report, re-organising and amplifying my Miro board. This is probably my weakest point in design, I’ve never really had a knack for art or making things look pretty, so while I understand marketing, I’m not great at creating attractive graphics. I think it’s good that I’m aware of my difficulties with this, and that I don’t get to hard on myself when I struggle to create aesthetic work like some of my peers. Regardless of this, I still enjoy it, and hope that my logo generation is up to standard for this assignment. After feedback from my course director, I reorganised my Miro to be more easily navigated. Along with this, I began to structure and build the visual summary deliverable as well as highlight and document the example pitches I want to talk about, plus a few urban spaces (although I will need to identify more this coming week). By identifying these example pitches, I have base models to work with where I can identify points of strength and points of improvement to hopefully visually communicate to the footballing community on how they could improve their preexisting infrastructure to benefit their local species. I’ve chosen 8 example pitches to work with, with all of them having a personal link to me throughout my playing years. This provides me with primary experience and evidence for each location, hopefully allowing deeper insight into their improvement. 

Learning wise for the week, the importance of planning continues to be hammered home, and the benefits of knowing my limits and restrictions only furthered the importance of good time management and setting achievable goals. Outside of planning, I learnt the importance of surrounding yourself with productive people, as despite it being a “break”, there was a lot of work to be done, and by always being around my mates who were also working hard it almost forced me to be working as well! This benefitted me massively as I feel like if I were on my own, I would’ve got a lot less work done.

Here are some photos of my draft logo’ and new prototype models :)

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Week 7 DES302 (sorry its a long one)

Wow, wow, wow, we are more or less halfway through! As terrifying as that is, it’s also an exciting milestone for my university journey and my capstone project. Week 7 has been fantastic for the most part, despite a few hiccups here and there. Again I’ve managed to stick closely to my Gantt chart and weekly planner. However, I’ve put the ball development on hold as I focus more on testing and iterating my stud concepts, as I believe this will allow me to achieve a greater end result with the time restrictions present. This closely follows my Plan B section regarding scope and final deliverables. Week 7 focused mostly on testing and documenting, as well as iterating my previous prototypes after said testing. I really enjoy this part of any project, so getting to learn and innovate my own ideas is great fun. Outside of university, this week has been great, it was the last week of the football season so I’ve got my evenings back now which is nice! Football didn’t go our way this week, and in all honesty I’m pretty glad the club season is over. We begin our University World Cup trainings on the 16th of September which I’m really looking forward to! I’m also going away for part of week 8 and week 9 to play hockey which is something else to be excited for! I’ve planned for week 8 to focus on research and computer development stuff so that I can still get some solid work done despite being away from campus and my flat.

CARL is here once again to help structure this reflection, his assistance is greatly appreciated. The context of this week was to test, learn, and test again. It was a very prototype heavy week on both my Gantt chart and weekly planner, and focused on getting my ideas into my hands so I could have some hands-on learning and really gain an understanding of my concepts. Week 7 was heavily reliant on the prototypes I created in week 6, and through proper testing and experimenting, I hoped that week 7 would lead to some valuable iterations as well as proof of concept.

I’m going to mix the action and results paragraph into one here, as they work well with each other during prototyping phases - the actions I take are in response to the results I get. To ensure that week 7 was successful and beneficial I tested, innovated, created, and tested again. The week started with testing the prototypes I had created in week 6, I tested and documented my first StudShell prototypes (the natural degrading studs). The physical tests for my first SeedShell mix prototypes went very well. The proof of concept, feasibility and validation of my idea were all proven (apart from the growing part but due to time restraints that part is assumed). The studs hold up well enough to attach and function with the boots, but also breakdown once used on a slightly wet grassy surface. Along with this, the aluminum cores are left behind and new shells can easily be replaced by sliding them onto the unscrewed core. Besides the proof of concept, mix 1 definitely had its flaws. The first came from a few of the original models crumbling due to not being compressed enough in the molding process (an easy enough fix). A more potent flaw was the fact that the majority of the SeedShells only held up for about a minute before breaking down. This is positive in terms of showing that the breaking down part works, and also would allow for more shells to be used during a game, however a minute is well short of what is feasible for any form of football game - even if for an exhibition. Players having to replace the shells every minute or so would result in a slow and boring process. In order to combat this, my next prototype mix will incorporate a greater part clay (starting with a 3/1 ratio of compost to clay rather than a 5/1 ratio) to ensure greater structural integrity for the shells, hopefully expanding their lifespan to a more reasonable amount of time. I will continue to test my future mixes until a structural balance and reasonable ratio is acquired to move forward with. Along with this, after looking at my SeedShell prototypes closer,I realised that some of the recycled aluminum cores were shorter, resulting in some of the molds having a lot less thread showing at the top. This is due to studs commonly coming in 3 different lengths, 11mm, 13mm, and 15mm. I had created a mold for a 15mm stud, as this allowed for the most seed mixture. What I didn't account for was my array of recycled cores, which is a mix of 13mm and 15mm. Therefore I thought it smart to create a new mold, this time out of spare clay, to accommodate for both sizes of cores I have. 

I also tested and iterated the 3D printed model of my SeedSculpt studs (the mechanical model). After testing, my 3D model definitely needs further iteration. Although the testing proved that my idea works, the gaps at the bottom of the stud are too big, and the angles of the groves aren't dramatic enough to restrict the flow of material through the stud. The twisting mechanic worked to carry material that was embedded into its groves, but the majority of material fell straight through the stud due to the gaps between the twist mechanic and the stud. Creating more dramatic angles for my twist mechanic, similar to the 3D model of my first prototype, could reduce the space for material to fall through. With this, I restructed the three key components of my 3D model. Firstly, I found that the thread I had designed was too tight for the screw mechanics to function properly. In order to improve this, I widened the the gaps within the screw-top to accommodate the thread better, as well as expanding the space at the entrance of the screw-top to allow the thread to fit better and screw in easier. Then, I found that the tip of the stud was quite weak, and that the threads didn't have enough tolerance to slide easily through the screw-top. With this in mind, I added reinforcement to the end point of the stud to thicken and strengthen it, and narrowed up the thread thickness as well as made them slightly shorter to hopefully allow a more smooth screw-in transition with the screw-top. And lastly, The big change from 3D model 3 to model 4 comes from the new spiral twist piece. After testing the 3D printed prototype of model 3, I found that the twist piece I had designed wasn't fitted enough for the shell, and allowed the seeds within the shell to fall out too easily. Along with this, it didn't print especially accurately due to the complex shape of the piece, resulting in a few holes on the edges. In order to fix this, I looked back at my earlier models, and how these addressed the issues stated earlier. With this, I found that by going back to a spiral pattern the opening at the bottom of the model is closed off a lot more efficiently, allowing the seeds to better stay in the shell. In order to counter the issues I found with a spiral mechanic in model 1, I thickened the central support beam as well as the ridges for the spiral itself to ensure that the model is strong enough for printing and testing. Once my new 3D model was completed, I created some rendered images using Fusion 360 to visualise how the model would look when crafted from a material like aluminum. Fusion is a very valuable tool for creating my 3D models and allowing fairly quick and effective renders, however they aren’t as visually appealing as renders I’ve seen through other programs like Octane Render. Despite this, Fusion is free through the University and pretty easy to use in terms of renders, making it a very valuable tool for me personally. 

Lastly for this reflection, we have the learning part. This week the values of prototyping and testing were further hammered home, I continued to learn of the benefits of creating physical prototypes and the benefits of documenting processes and identifying flaws to further iterate and improve your work. I’ve learnt to avoid my own bias towards my own ideas, and to detach any emotional connection to them aside from passion in order to allow myself to identify flaws and not be scared to drastically change what I’ve created / come to terms with mistakes and errors I’ve made. I struggled with this early on in this degree, as once I had an idea I became very attached to seeing it finished, and wasn’t very open to others ideas for ideations or change, resulting in projects that were fairly one dimensional. Learning to listen and adopt others ideas into my work, as well as not being scared to have a bad idea has allowed me to grow massively as a designer, and has vastly improved my work as well as my ability to work in a team and provide feedback.

Here are some photos of my new 3D model, my renders, and the SeedShell prototypes!

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Week 6 DES302 Capstone

The first term of my capstone project is done! 6 weeks in, and I'm pretty happy with my progress so far. I’ve stuck pretty closely to my Gantt chart plan, although my scope has decreased slightly with removing the ball concept and development. Instead, I’ve focused more on creating multiple stud prototypes that offer different ideas for the same outcome (habitat regeneration). I spent most of this week gathering materials and creating prototypes, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was able to work alongside the FabLab technicians to create a scaled-up 3D model of my mechanical stud concept, as well as discuss and create clay-based seed bomb studs through advice from the head of the UoA pottery department. Going into the mid-semester break, I’m confident with what I’m creating and hope these two weeks can be used productively for testing and further prototyping.

Once again, I’ve asked CARL to help me write this reflection, he’s really becoming a valuable friend to have around. Starting with the context stage, this week was a key milestone in my capstone project plan, focusing on gathering materials, prototyping, and testing. Along with this, I planned to research permit permissions around using green urban spaces in Auckland. I wanted to create multiple physical prototypes that allowed me to get a proper feel for my ideas and also test them in hand. 

To make this context a reality, I spent a lot of time researching production methods, crafting, driving, and spending (yuck). I developed physical prototypes for both of my stud ideas, with the mechanical twist-stud concept being scaled up three times and 3D printed in the FabLab. I scaled the mechanical model up because it allowed me to better see any flaws in my design, as well as reduced the risk of structural instability from 3D printing something so small. The 3D model was created using white PLA and breakaway through a .8 nozel with a triangular print pattern. These settings were chosen due to the increased printing speed and availability of material. The .8 nozel allows more material to be applied, thus decreasing the printing time, while also increasing the strength of the print. The triangular print pattern was chosen for the same reasons. These settings were then applied in a program called Cura and were transferred to the UltiMaker printers in the FabLab through a .3mf file. Cura was a fantastic tool for this, it provides a view of what your print will look like within the printer, how each layer will be printed, what materials will be used, etc. The natural seedbomb stud idea was created from a combination of bee pollinator seed mix, 100% green waste compost, and air-dry clay after a discussion with Steve from the FabLab and Franca from Pottery. The bee pollinator seed mix was used due to its wide variety of supplied seeds, which are all non-invasive, benefit my target demographic, and require minimal care to grow. 100% green waste compost was used to reduce any risks with handling, as compost that also incorporates organic waste can be dangerous to touch. Air-dry clay was used due to its natural malleability and neutrality with my chosen seeds and compost. To make these seedbomb studs, the first thing I did was create a mold of a pre-existing football stud. I created this mold from a mixture of flour, water and salt, which formed a dough that I imprinted the stud into before baking. This allowed me to create a mold with materials I already owned and was a fast and cheap solution that was also highly effective when it came to creating my seedbomb studs.  

This resulted in Week 6 being a lot of fun, extremely valuable and productive. I really enjoyed being in the FabLab heaps and spending hours touching up and testing my 3D model. I also found molding the seedbomb studs to be quite therapeutic. Having physical prototypes to iterate and test over the holidays is something I set out to achieve from day one when I created my Gantt chart, and to have this done is a massive weight off my shoulders. Furthermore, the results of my prototypes have been really positive. They work as I intend them to, and with some fine-tuning, I think I’ll have fully functional high-fidelity prototypes done sooner rather than later.     

On the learning side this week, I found being able to hold and play with my prototypes taught me a lot, both about the values of prototyping and what iterations were needed for my project to progress. Along with this, I continued to learn the benefits of an achievable plan and sticking to said plan, alongside the gratification and achievement one feels from this. On the practical side, I learnt how to deal with clay, how this can be used alongside molds, how to import files into Cura and export them for 3D printing, what the settings within Cura do, and the painstaking process of land permits in Auckland. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how Week 6 went, and the only thing that’s upsetting me with this assignment is that half of the allocated project time is up!

Here are some photos of my prototyping process and my prototypes :)

Testing 3D model rotation

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Week 5 Capstone Des302

35 days down, 58 days to go! Time is not slowing down at all, and the halfway point in this project is creeping up very quickly. Week 5 had a strong focus on gathering feedback and really locking in on how I’m going to complete my capstone project. Through discussions with lab technicians and classmates, as well as presenting my idea to Gabi and the rest of my class on Thursday, I gained a lot of valuable insight and validation for my ideas, which will be discussed in the action part of this reflection. Looking back at this week, It was pretty straightforward, I was on campus when possible, watched Spain play Sweden on Tuesday, watched England beat Aussie on Wednesday, had a rough Sunday night with the final result, and played football all Saturday. Week 5 was a massive footballing week, and my understanding of the spectating experience continued to grow and develop, as well as my involvement as a player and a coach. I also took more notice of the natural spaces around the pitches I played on this week and began to think about how these could be redesigned/improved through the incorporation of different plant life and terraforming. It’s been a positive week in all honesty, I’m feeling happy with my progress and am excited to start properly experimenting and prototyping!

CARL will assist me with this reflection, as the framework's structure fits my style and approach to reflections the best. In terms of context, this week, the main focus was finalising what I will do and how it will work, as well as gathering feedback and user experience with my concept. I planned to research the development of my idea through an understanding of materials and production. I also focused on furthering the visual message of my project through realistic and metaphorical image generation. 

In terms of the actions I took this week to develop my project, I created scaled 3D models for my mechanical stud design, as well as developed a solution to the attachment issues I was having previously with the top part of the stud to be ready for printing and prototyping next week. I also completed a service delivery canvas as part of my Design for Conservation process. This canvas allowed me to visualise and understand the experience of one of my stakeholders with my proposed project while also developing the experience for unforeseen people and wildlife. I gathered further research on the development of my urban space and pitch mock-ups (architecture materials, what it would look like, what would be used etc.) and began to plan how both of my mock-ups could look. At the moment, I’m planning on using artificial turf offcuts to create the bases for both of my mock-ups as it repurposes waste as well as offers a realistic appearance and feel for my final mock-ups. I also researched further into NZ seed bombs which EaglesRest produces in association with Steve Wratten, Professor Bio-Protection Research Centre at Lincoln University and Ruud Kleinpaste. These seedbombs are solid clumps of seeds, dirt, and minerals that are created to be thrown onto lawns and left without any more care. They are created to break down on their own through weather cycles. This, along with stakeholder feedback, sparked the idea for another of my stud prototypes, this time focusing on creating biodegradable stud shells that deposit seeds by breaking throughout the game. 

This work resulted in a week where I feel I progressed effectively, although I also created more work for myself moving forwards. My project is well and truly into the propose and validate phase now, and through physical prototyping, I’ll hopefully be able to validate the feasibility of my concepts fully. I’m genuinely excited to get into physical prototyping, it’s always been my favourite part of design, and I’m really looking forward to my ideas coming to life, as well as getting to muck around with creating a seed mixture and utilising 3D printers.  

This week I’ve learnt a lot about materials and production, mostly around what sort of metals are used for modern-day studs, as well as why they are used (cost-effective, malleability etc.). I’ve also learned about my stakeholders and the experience of my proposed project through stakeholder feedback and the service delivery canvas. My 3D modelling skills have also improved, as I’ve created a threaded 3D model for my stud prototype. Along with this, I’ve learned about 3D printing and the potential of using a rotary CNC to create my mechanical prototype out of the aforementioned aluminium for the prototype to be strong enough to test vigorously. I’m excited to see where my project will take me now, and I am really enjoying seeing my ideas develop and grow with me throughout this semester.

Here are some of the AI-generated images to show the metaphorical vision of my project and how it could look event-wise in urban spaces, along with my further developed 3D model

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Week 4 Capstone DES302

Week 4

Time is flying, and it is a bit worrying at how quickly it’s passing. Week 4 finished, and my capstone is really getting into crunch time. I’m pretty sure I’ve had a productive week, although it feels like it's gone so fast that I can’t remember half of what I accomplished. Outside of university, this week was brilliantly busy. I played three football games in 7 days, watched England qualify for a world cup semi-final, and my own world cup journey began. We had a meeting on Monday as a team, discussed visas and kits, took media photos and really cemented the fact that we were going to a world cup in October. While I should be ecstatic about this, and while with that awesome group of guys, I was, when placed out of that environment, I’m struggling to be excited about something that also signifies the end of my university journey, alongside the time-related stress of this project. That meeting was the first time in a while that my mind had completely switched off from this project (other than when playing sports), and it felt like a huge weight off of my shoulders. However, once the next day rolled around and the week took off again, my mind really hadn’t switched off. This has benefitted and hindered me. I feel like I’m constantly putting hours into my capstone, even when nothing physical has been recorded, which makes me feel productive and on track. However, being so encapsulated in one thing means that my mind is constantly racing, which is frustrating when I’m trying to switch off.

I’m going to use the CARL framework again, as I found it worked quite well last week. Context-wise, week 4 had much the same focus as week 3, however I had more direction. I needed to refine my 3D models so that they were ready to print and prototype in order to align with my Gantt chart plan. I also planned to research stud production and the materials used, as well as dive into the world of seeds and figure out what seeds would work with my idea as well as be beneficial for my target demographic. 

In terms of how this was achieved, I continued to follow the provided templates from the Design for Conservation framework. These templates are one of the biggest strengths of the D4C methodology, they provide a clear and concise plan to follow, and allow a lot of my work to be visualised as well as ensuring I don’t skip important steps of developing a design project. I created multiple stakeholder personas for humans, non-humans (lizards, bees, and other wildlife), and for organisations. I developed my positionality, created a positionality statement, and reworked my values. Along with this, I developed my 3D models a lot, and created a new spiral mechanic that mimics much closer to that of a salt shaker. It looks like a liquorice twist and should be much stronger than my previous prototype. I also finally got around to researching what sort of seeds I’d like to plant and why, as well as if they were feasible for the measurements of my stud design. I found that manuka, clovers, and wildflowers are all viable options by providing benefits to multiple natural species and being small enough to work with my stud prototype. They also all grow naturally in NZ and require little to no care once planted, reducing the need for watering and gardening after my event. However, Manuka seeds are a bit hard to harvest, as they require a drying period in their seed pods before they are prone to growth. 

After all of this, I think I had another solid week of work. I completed almost all of the weekly tasks I set for myself on my weekly planner. I was also able to assist my friends with feedback and enjoy my extracurricular activities. Despite this, I still feel like I could’ve done more and utilised my time even better. When I have training in the evening or something planned, I struggle to really knuckle down and smash out work until after whatever I had on has happened. This results in some late nights that aren’t very beneficial in the long run. Fortunately for my project, the regular football season ends in 3 weeks, and training is moved to mornings, meaning that hopefully, I’ll be able to lock in completely on my work for each day. This is, however, three weeks away, which in the scope of this capstone project, is quite a lot of time. 

I’ve learnt this week that being busy outside of uni has its positives and negatives. I’ve learnt that it’s good to stay busy and enjoy what I’m doing, but that also results in a guilty feeling of using my time on something other than my project. This furthers my understanding of the importance of time management, more to the point of time utilisation. It’s one thing planning your time wisely, but another actually using it successfully / efficiently. Along with this, I’ve learnt about specific plant life and their benefits to our ecosystems, as well as their needs and requirements to grow and thrive. I’ve also continued learning 3D modelling skills using fusion 360. This program offers a solid rendering view for visually presenting my models, as well as simple exportation for 3D printing, however, has taken me a while to get the hang of and puts my computer under strain when I run it.

Screenshots of my Week 4 plan and my updated 3D model.

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Week 3 of Capstone

Week 3 was a lot more enjoyable than Week 2! Motivation came to me much easier, and my vision for my project has become a lot clearer as the last couple of weeks have passed. What I want to create and how it could work has been on my mind all week, and through mental visualisation, I feel like I’ve already gone through multiple prototypes and iterations of how my stud concept could function! To be distracted from life by a university assignment is not how a degree typically goes. In fact, it’s usually the other way around. However, working with my passions means that my excitement for what I want to create has forced my brain to be whizzing with ideas and iterations constantly! 

For this reflection, I want to try out the CARL framework (mostly because I like the name). This framework starts with context. This week focused on creating a functional concept for the boot stud, as well as completing further research. I wanted to remove the anxiety I had, or at least lessen it, by understanding my idea better, and developing it to the point where there are a lot less grey areas around how it could work and what it will do. I also wanted to tidy up my work by make it more organised and easy to navigate.

In terms of the actions I took to achieve this, I researched further into the mechanics of pepper grinders and began 3D modelling a few prototypes to scale. I spent a lot of the week refining these models, with notable changes coming to the size of the stud, the way the mechanics function, the viability of said mechanics, and how this all comes together (which I’m still trying to figure out). Furthermore, I continued to develop my project through the use of Design 4 Conservation frameworks, completing personas and a reconnection ritual canvas to go along with the values, idea selection checklist, and conservation challenge I completed last week. I also put in a few more hours learning about seeds and what sort of spread I could use to benefit certain wildlife. Along with this, I correlated my workings so far into a presentation and used AI to generate some images that capture the essence of what I want my project to be. I organized my miro board into sections representing each phase of my design process, and sized them all into a4 frames, to both improve the navigation of the page as well as it’s aesthetic. 

This resulted in what I felt to be a solid, productive working week. I achieved the majority of the goals I set for myself on my weekly planner, and got started on the other goals that I didn’t quite finish. I’m feeling a lot more confident and happy with what I’m creating, and think that I’m in a good place to stay on top of my work. However, there is always room for improvement, and I think I still could’ve done more this week to have achieved all of my goals, rather than just the majority. 

I’ve learnt that setting myself up for success by ending the previous week on a high has resulted in a productive and rewarding week. I’ve also learnt that devoting time to organisation is incredibly important, as although I’ve always been fairly confident with my time management, my physical organisation (i.e. a miro board) is normally quite messy and a jumble of ideas thrown onto a page. By taking time to actually organise my board into a layout that is clear and concise I’m able to focus better on the task at hand, and not get sidetracked so easily. However, the challenge of ensuring my scope is accurate and achievable is still at hand, and I’m unsure how long it’ll take until I’m 100% sure of what I am capable of achieving. I hope that as I further develop my idea and prove to myself that it’s viable and functional, that this feeling of uncertainty will lessen as my confidence grows.

Here are some of the AI images that were generated ( Images generated by gencraft, 2023, https://gencraft.com/generate) as well as a zoomed-out view of my miro board and screenshot of my 3D model.

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Week 2 DES302

Week 2 is done and dusted! This week was a bit of a struggle for me, if I’m being honest. I’m going to give the four F’s reflection toolkit a go for this week. So, starting with the facts - This week, I made it to my third stud prototype, this time focusing on mechanics similar to a pepper grinder, simplifying the seed system and allowing more space for seeds to be stored. Furthermore, I used multiple toolkits from the Design 4 Conservation methodology to help reconnect myself with my kawa and positionality while honing in on my ideas and their impacts. Along with this, I researched foot rotation biomechanics for running in order to validate the idea that twist-release studs would work. I further developed my project scope, creating 3 plans that scale in scope and difficulty. 

Now for the feelings part. This week started with a very difficult loss for me personally, as a very influential person in my life moved away. This meant that the week started on quite a sour note, and I struggled for motivation to work for the first half of the week. I didn’t get much done, which did not help the feeling of anxiety around completing such an important project. I travelled home to Taranaki over the weekend to spend time with family, drastically improving my motivation and reducing my anxiety towards my capstone. Being around family always offers me a calming, grounded sensation and allows my brain to slow down and refocus on what is important. I ended the week in quite a positive mood and hold more excitement for my project now than before as it starts to take shape properly.

In terms of what I found out this week, I found that sometimes stepping away from work and focusing your energy elsewhere allows a bit of a mental refresh. This meant that once I could refocus on working, I had new ideas and felt motivated and excited again. Along with this, I learnt that it’s ok to have slow weeks sometimes. You can’t always be at 100%, and if you try to, your work will only suffer. Taking time to think and reconnect with your values stops your work from falling down a rabbit hole, and although the quantity completed may be less, I learnt that the quality of what you can produce is much greater when your mind is at ease. 

For the future, I now know that through reconnecting with what is important to me, I can make it through unexpected events and plan ahead so that when I am in a better place, I can comfortably catch up to a high standard. Furthermore, defining my scope and developing my timeline has helped put my project into a more viable perspective, ensuring that future me has a path to follow. I think the Douglas Adams quote, “I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.” sums up what I’ve learnt quite well, as well as describing the design process as a whole. 

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Week 1 Blog DES302

Just like that, week 1 is done! It’s been a pretty hectic first week, and the shift from holiday mode to work mode is well and truly underway. After a week of work, my project is currently still in a very developmental stage. I’ve spent the week researching issues surrounding sustainability in football, the environmental impacts of football pitches and their upkeep, the feasibility of my concepts, the numbers behind how they could work, the engineering behind how they could work, and what the finished project could be. Along with this, I’ve set up a calendar, a weekly to-do list and begun building a detailed timeline for my project. I’ve also completed the required ethics modules.

For my capstone, I want to create an event based around football being used to redevelop urban spaces to benefit multiple natural species. At the moment, I want to create seed-planting studs, a seed-spreading football, a pitch mock-up, and an information booklet. I want to use areas of green urban space not normally used for sport which could have almost an art piece installed from the seeds planted throughout the game. It would create a 1 of 1 layout of stuff growing that showcased the exhibition game that took place there. Seed packs used would be chosen to specifically benefit the wildlife of the urban areas used. It could also use the event to raise awareness for greener football. Could showcase to clubs how they could improve their set-ups, i.e. different fertilisers, new plantlife around fields, paints used, water used, etc. This could be done through a casebook/information booklet. 

This week I researched the mechanics of retractable pens and how the pressure placed on the top of the pen allowed the ballpoint to retract. I was hoping I could use similar mechanics to create a stud that allows seeds to pop out of the bottom when pressure is applied to the stud. However, I found that it took a team of 66 designers to create the mechanics of the first retractable ballpoint pen, resulting in a bit of a shock to my system. With this, I began looking into alternative ways to turn a stud into something that can release seeds while in use.  

I also looked into the size and shape of the studs I could use, as well as how these affect the number of seeds that could be stored, plus the size of common seeds. However, I found that a lot of data needed to be included for the specific sizes of certain seeds I wanted to use (like the size of a Carex Comans seed). This is frustrating but should be easy to bypass by purchasing and measuring seeds myself.

At this moment in time, the main tools and technologies I’m using are Google and Miro, as well as a tape measure and a calculator. Since it’s still early on in my project, I’ve spent the week using these tools to try and validate the feasibility of my ideas and to develop my brainstorms further. Further down the line, I’m considering the use of 3D printed moulds for creating the housing for my stud idea, as well as to create the intricate mechanical pieces for the inside of the studs. Along with this, I’m considering using some of the architecture school tools to create a detailed scaled-down mock-up of what my final solution could look like. 

The strengths of Google come from the sheer size of it as a tool. The information it provides is widely available and easy to access. Miro is an excellent tool for collecting all of my ideas in one place, and interlinking them, while also offering formatting tools and templates to plan and collect research. I can’t think of any weaknesses for either of these tools at the moment, but if I come across any they’ll feature on the blog at some point. 3D printing wise, it offers an interesting and accurate way to create moulds and intricate plastic pieces. However, it is time-consuming and sometimes the quality of the pieces is below par. 

The main challenge I’ve encountered with week one has been the lack of existing precedents for my idea. This is both a good and a bad thing, as it offers me the opportunity to create something in a field that hasn’t been done before, but it also means I’m heading into the unknown with this project.  

The only way I can think of resolving these challenges is to ensure I manage my time efficiently and effectively, and focus on certain principles of my idea, rather than trying to do to much.

The interactions with my friends in design and their feedback and validation on my ideas makes me happy! Being able to research and create something in a field I’m extremely invested and interested in is also something that makes me smile and ensures that I enjoy my work. 

So far the anxiety I’ve felt from the sheer scope and importance of my project is the main thing that has made me sad for this project, however I feel as I further grasp my ideas and develop my project further, as well as likely changes to my projects scope, this anxiety will hopefully lessen. 

Screenshots from my Miro Board - A brainstorm of ideas, figuring out the mechanics of a retractable pen, and the volume and feasibility of storing seeds in studs.

[harrybushelldesignblog]

Day 1 Blog time DES302

Made it through day 1 lets ducking go.  

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Improving Public Bathrooms

DES243 Assignment 2 - public bathrooms   By Harry Bushell

Information Gathering

Find out as much as you can and describe the ideas you have about public bathrooms. What sorts of problems did you identify? What sorts of solutions can you imagine? How has this changed your thoughts about this most mundane of human facilities?

Research

Personal experience - Throughout my lifetime, I’ve used a fair share of different toilets. From high-tech automatic toilets in Dubai, to toilets with hoses instead of toilet paper in Malaysia, each houses its own positives and negatives. For example, the highly automated design I experienced in Dubai was extremely easy to navigate, and required minimal effort to proceed through the bathroom experience. With automated doors, automated looks, automatic taps and soap dispensers, the bathroom appealed to a large majority of people, as automated equipment allows a variety of people to be able to use the bathroom, regardless of motor ability or strength. However, the bathroom would only flush once you unlocked the door with a big button and left. This proposes a big potential problem. If the toilet is blocked, or requires two flushes to flush correctly, then this will be unable to happen, the only way to flush the toilet is to enter and leave again. This means that if a blockage occurs, or a second flush is required, the next person using the bathroom will have an unpleasant experience due to the toilet not flushing correctly. This could be solved by simply allowing the user to control the flush. Through the simple incorporation of a big, easy to press flush button, this problem is solved. On the other end of the spectrum, the public toilet I used in Malaysia left a lot to be desired. The distinct lack of toilet paper, which instead was replaced by a hose-type instrument, resulted in quite an uncomfortable experience. After some brief research, I’ve discovered that these hose things are known as bidets. These bidets are definitely a different take on the toilet experience, and while I see the reasoning behind their use, I feel that toilet paper should’ve been available for use as well.

How this has changed my thoughts -  Both of these experiences, as well as research conducted online, have changed my approach to this assignment already, and have made me think about parts of bathrooms that I would normally take for granted (toilet paper for example). They also made me think about ways that these could be changed, improved, or downright removed. Furthermore, through research, I discovered the reasons for things in bathrooms that I was overwise oblivious to, like showers for example, which after research I found are present for people that would otherwise not have a hygienic place to shower. Despite this, I think this could be further improved, and is partially an aspect that I'll approach in the later part of this assignment.  

From my research, as well as my experiences, I concluded on the two aspects chosen below.

Design

Choose two aspects that you think you could improve on. Use speculative design to tease out some ideas. Be creative and don’t just choose something simple – this is an opportunity to show your skill, work through some designs and be creative.

 Draw or write about the two aspects mentioned above, and how these will work for people with a myriad of disabilities.

Design guides

For each of these two aspects, draw a diagram or write at least three paragraphs as a design guide for people constructing a public bathroom that could be useful when building or refurbishing. You should point out aspects that they need to be aware of that they might not think of otherwise.

Chosen Aspects

Aspect 1: Toilet seat

The toilet seat is a crucial aspect of public toilets, or more to the point all toilets. As they stand, the average toilet seat in an average public toilet offers a simple seating experience. Depending on the design, they can be either end of the comfort spectrum, with some being plastic and shaped partially anatomically, and others being metal and shaped ovally. The plastic shaped seats offer a better experience in terms of comfort and affordability to the less abled, but still are far from ideal when it comes to different heights, angles, further comfort, accessibility etc. With this in mind, I believe that I can improve on certain aspects in regards to toilet seats, and through using a speculative lens as suggested, I can overcome the limits of what we know now to design something that offers a greater solution than if I used a more realistic design approach.   

Ideas for toilet seat iterations (speculative)

Toilet seats that change height after the user is scanned on entrance to ensure the correct height is in place 

Pros: Offers comfortable heights for all, proposing an easier use of public toilets for people with disabilities or with physical difficulties. Scanning technology is mostly available.

Cons: having to be scanned could take up valuable time. Expensive. 

A toilet seat that adjusts height, angle, and size through verbal commands. On entrance a person can voice their needs i.e their disability and the toilet will adjust accordingly

Pros: Offers a completely comfortable and personal experience for people that have required changes.

Cons: Verbal tech might not be able to recognize commands correctly and wouldn't work for people that are mute. 

A self cleaning toilet seat

Pros: clean toilet seats to ensure a basic comfortable experience. Less high tech than other ideas so easier to incorporate. 

Cons: Sustainability and creates a lot of waste.

A toilet seat that incorporates a bidet that is angled to allow hand-free cleaning. Built in dryer as well 

Pros: Offers easy cleaning that doesn’t require the use of hands, meaning limited arm and hand movement won’t affect the users ability to clean.

Cons: Angle would have to be correct along with other things, would need something incorporated to allow it to stop hands free.

Personal toilet seats that when plugged into the outside of the public toilets create a custom interior toilet that’s personalized to the users needs.

Pros: Creates a completely custom toilet seat experience allowing the heights and angles to appeal to less able people that would need different toilet heights. 

Cons: Requires the ability to plug something in, maybe a card scan would work better as it requires less motor ability. Both also could use up valuable time. 

Collapsible toilet seats that expand out (Tony Stark suitcase) and are placed on compatible toilets. 

Pros: Creates a completely custom toilet seat experience allowing the heights and angles to appeal to less able people that would need different toilet heights. 

Cons: time taken for it to expand out, and having to use motor skills to place the seat onto the compatible toilet. 

Chosen idea: Personal toilet seats that when plugged into the outside of public toilets create a custom interior toilet that’s personalized to the users needs. 

With my chosen idea, I believe, through multiple iterations, it can result in a near perfect toilet seat experience. Through offering personalization with each user and the fact that this is speculative, the toilet seat can practically take any shape or size in order to meet the needs of its user. The information received for how the toilet seat will appear comes through personalized cards, that are scanned quickly on entrance to allow the bathroom to know which seat to place in the room. This information will be programmed onto the cards using a website or app, and if needed, can be programmed by doctors and physicians for less able users. These toilet seats can be raised higher or lower to appeal to the needs of the user. For example, users with less or weaker motor skills would have higher seats to ensure that there is less difficulty raising and lowering themselves. Furthermore, bars could fold out from the seat to further assist raising and lowering. Along with this, I think incorporating the bidet and built-in dryer would further the toilet seat experience, and would be a welcome customization option when programming the user’s card. This would mean lesser abled users could hygienically use the toilet without worrying about arm and hand difficulties. Adding to this, another option would allow the toilet to raise and lower with a button push or sensor, to allow users that need it to go from standing, to sitting, to standing again all while supported by the seat. For wheelchair users, the toilet seat could be customized with bars so that users could lift themselves on and off. Or, if needed, the seat could slide underneath the wheelchair, and by supporting the legs of the user, slowly slide them off their chair and onto the toilet. With these iterations, and other customizations that I haven’t thought of or listed here yet, I believe that this toilet seat will offer as close to a perfect toilet seat experience as possible. Despite this, there are still obvious flaws. The scanning and transition process of the seat customizing itself for the user will take up valuable time if viewed from a realistic lens, and in the heat of the moment this could be detrimental. However, speculatively this could all happen extremely quickly and use up minimal time. Furthermore, people potentially unable to scan cards or possessing extremely minimal motor skills would still struggle with the use of these toilets. With this in mind, I believe that the perfect public toilet, in particular the toilet seat, is realistically highly unlikely to be achieved due to the sheer amount of customization required for different people to share an equally successful experience.   

Aspect 1 Design Guide:

Entrance - If available, the entrance must be on a flat surface or with a supporting ramp to allow access to all. The scanner on the door must be accessible from all heights, and will be accessed when the user's card is scanned. If applying to already built toilets, ensure that the sensor still can be accessed from all heights. This is a crucial part of the installation of this system, as if the scanner is not accessible by all, then the aim of the toilet seat iteration will not be met. 

Wiring - Once the scanner has been installed, the wiring from the scanner must be able to reach the toilet station area, where the customized toilets are stored. Once this wiring is installed, ensure that it works with a test scanner card. Ensure the wiring is out of sight and hidden so it cannot be tampered with or damaged. 

Toilet - PRE BUILT: If using a pre built toilet, ensure that the plumbing and pipe work is protected to ensure minimal construction is needed. Once the toilet and plumbing is protected, begin the installation of the toilet seat customizer. By removing .3m wide by 1m long either side of the toilet base, ensure that no piping is damaged. Once the area has been marked out and removed, dig .5m down to create an area either side of the toilet base for the toilet seat customizer tools. Once the area is complete, install and wire the toilet seat customizers.

Toilet - NEW BUILD: Remove the area required to install a basic toilet set up, piping included. Once removed, ensure the new toilet seats are installed onto the compatible toilet. The area removal on either side of this build is still required if a compatible toilet is used, once again a .3m wide by 1m long area. This area will be the same .5m depth. Once the areas are constructed, ensure the newly built toilet is in position and functional, and then install the nanotech toilet seat wiring and design either side of the toilet.

Aspect 2: Drying

The aspect of drying has always annoyed me when using public toilets, and with the research on the presence of showers in public toilets, I think that a good dryer is more important than ever for a successful public toilet. Default hand dryers in public toilets often do little to actually dry your hands, and do nothing to dry people after the use of a shower. With this I think there is huge room for improvement in the drying aspect of public toilets. The options available now are commonly; paper towels (produce a lot of waste and require capable motor skills), Reusable hand towels (often broken machines and need repairing often, plus require capable hand use) and hand dryers (useless for drying after a shower and often very average at drying hands, however don't require any grip strength to use or hand maneuverability). With these pre-existing options in mind, and from the pros and cons listed, I think hand dryers offer the most potential in terms of creating an accessible drying experience for all. Thanks to the speculative approach suggested, I believe that I can create something that would vastly improve the drying aspect of public toilets. 

Ideas for hand dryer iterations (speculative)

A dryer that can also be used for the showers, i.e a drying capsule that is wheelchair friendly. Maybe even a capsule that is both the shower and dryer

Pros: offers full body drying for all abilities, as long as they can be maneuvered into the dryers range. 

Cons: would use a lot of energy and space

A dryer that changes size when sensing what's in front of it, can be used for just hands or the entire body

Pros: Offers a full range of drying, body and hands. Only uses required power due to changing size. Offers drying to all, as long as they can move into the dryer.

Cons: Energy consumption. A room that can change size by scanning something is quite high tech for a bathroom. Expensive

A towel generator that creates towels that are then recycled into a new towel each use

Pros: Depending on the size of towel generated, could be used for the entire body or just hands. Recycling the towels means minimal waste created. 

Cons: Would require maintenance with frequent recycling of towels. Energy consumption. Means that motor skills are required to grab and use the towel.

Robot dryers that lock onto parts of your body that need drying (think little orb floaty thingies that zoom around the room)

Pros: offer a full range of drying, don’t require any interaction meaning less able people can still dry properly.

Cons: Programming and expense to create and manufacture something like this. 

Chosen idea: Robot dryers that lock onto parts of your body that need drying

With these ideas, I believe that I have approached the aspect of drying in different ways, and figured out multiple different ways that the aspect can be improved. With this, I like my robot dryer idea the most, as it is the most speculative and fun idea in my opinion. Robot dryers that lock onto parts of your body that need drying offer what I believe to be the most intriguing and potentially effective solution to improving the aspect of public toilet dryers. Through the incorporation of multiple technologies like moisture sensors, voice activation, solar power, and further developments I haven’t listed or thought of yet, these robot dryers could offer a complete, efficient and accessible drying experience. Appearing like orbs, these robots will feature high power warm air dryers, and float around using miniature fans to allow themselves to maneuver around the user to dry all aspects of their body if they've used a shower, or move around the users hands if they need drying. The dryers will have sensors present that are linked to the doors to ensure that they cannot leave the bathroom. The robots will sense what needs drying through scanning the user and using moisture sensors to pick up wet areas. If required, the robots could also be controlled by voice commands if more drying is needed or if you want the robots to stop. The robots will begin their drying process once the shower has been turned on and off, or when the tap has been turned on and off. When not in use, the robots will store themselves in a charging docket powered by solar panels on the roof of the public toilet. Thanks to the maneuverability of these robots, they offer drying for all people, no matter their potential restrictions. Furthermore, they propose a drying option to those that have used public toilet showers and don’t possess a towel or adequate drying equipment. Furthermore, if the shower is used by someone who lacks the arm strength or maneuverability to dry themselves could still be dried with no effort other than just standing still.  

  Aspect 2 Design Guide:

Charging docket: The charging docket measures 1m by .55m by .25m. The docket must be installed below the roof and at the opposite side of the door, at a safe height so it cannot be considered a hazard. The installation is near the roof to minimize the required wiring to attach the docket to the solar panel positioned on the opposite side of the roof to act as a power source for the dryers. If in a location where there is minimal sun, another power source is required. Once installed, ensure that the dryers are securely attached to the docket, and test the wiring to the taps and shower to ensure that the dryers detach and reattach successfully.    

Door and theft prevention: Ensure that the sensor is installed above and below the door. Test these sensors with the dryers to ensure that they work and so that the dryers cannot leave the bathroom unless deactivated (which will require a special key). Ensure that the sensors are placed in positions which pose no threat as a trip or potential hazard in any way. Ensure that they will not make entrance to the bathroom any harder, and are mostly discreet so they cannot be damaged easily.

Taps and Shower requirements: Ensure that the tap and shower are functional, and that when turned on and off the water stops relatively quickly. Once the tap and shower are working properly, attach a sensor to the shower and tap that will stop the dryers locking onto their left over water drops when using its moisture sensors. Make sure that the wiring that reads when the tap and shower are turned on and off is discrete and offers no hazards in any way. Then, wire them to the charging docket and test. The dryers should, with the sensors attached, be released when the tap or shower are turned off, and will return to their charging station when the user leaves the bathroom and the door senses itself being closed. 

Hero image

Prepare one 'hero image' that shows a key aspect of one of the designs you have come up with that you think is particularly innovative. This can either be your own drawing, or a montage of images you have found that illustrate your design idea. These will be compiled into a set of slides to be shared with everyone in the class. You may use a few words (eg. 10 or so) to point out key details.

Workbook

Keep a record of the key moments in your learning journey, and describe in particular the path you have taken, the inspirational references you have found, etc.

Information gathering phase - Although my experiences have shaped my thoughts on what should be improved and what aspects I want to focus on, I thought it would be smart to ask for others' experiences and what others would want to change. With this in mind, I asked my sister and my mother what they would change about public toilets. My sister mentioned the lack of hygiene and overall uncleanliness of public toilets. We bounced a few ideas off each other and came to the conclusion of making the public toilet into what's practically a massive dishwasher. We decided that the room could have a water source that stems from the floor and roof, and shoot clean soapy water all around the public toilet to clean it, and then through the same shooters, fire warm air in order to dry out the toilet. We both enjoyed the speculative nature of this concept, however I decided against pursuing it further due to the consequences that present themselves with a concept like this. For example, massive amounts of water would be used in this process, and it would also take up valuable time when the cleaning process took place. We decided that it would have to clean itself once a day, and preferably at an hour of least popularity in order to reduce the amount of potential accidents where the toilet is unable to be used due to cleaning. Despite this, I quite like a few of the ideas we created, and will try to incorporate them in later parts of this assignment. Next, I spoke to mum to see what she would change. Mum mentioned that the floors always seem to be sticky, and the toilet seats are often uncomfortable or dirty. Due to the sticky floors mostly being due to cleaning chemicals used, and the fact we already discussed cleaning, Mum and I decided to look into how to change toilet seats, and I ended up using some of these ideas for my first aspect. 

Design and aspects phase - This was by far my favourite phase of this assignment. Thanks to the speculative approach suggested, I practically had free reign of what to design. However, due to my personality and design thinking, I tried to create designs that, while still speculative, had mostly realistic or possible features. In this phase, I took big inspiration from the lecture done on cyborgs, as well as my love for superheroes like Iron Man and Batman. With this in mind, and the inspiration from Iron Man in particular, my design for aspect 1 was influenced heavily by the scene in Iron Man 2 when Tony Stark's suit folds out of his briefcase and onto his body. With this idea, of a smaller package folding into something shaped perfectly through nanotech and little grooves and squares, I thought I could design something similar to provide a perfectly shaped toilet seat. Although my design isn’t perfect, as there are only a select amount of squares, I still think it's a cool concept, and the idea of these squares flipping over each other and building something new through technology is very cool in my opinion.

For my second aspect, I took a lot of inspiration from a video game called Destiny, where a small hovering robot is a useful companion throughout the game. With this design and concept in mind, I ideated my final idea for aspect 2. Considering the abilities of this companion, I thought it would be cool to dull such an interesting robot design into something very basic like a hand dryer. So, that’s what I did. I went for a sleeker rounded design for the drying orbs to make them appear more friendly, and went for a sleek black colour to ensure they show dirt less. I incorporated cool detail colours like the robot shown below, with the most interesting being the aqua blue used for this robot's eye. I used the same colour for a detail on my design, as I think it creates a very futuristic look through minimal detail.

 Hero Image process - This was, despite the lack of quality in my image, the hardest part of this assignment. I still don’t really understand what a hero image is and how they were wanted to appear, so I went for a pretty basic display of what I think the orb could appear like if created from objects that already exist. With the movement rotor created from those hover sensor toy things, and the drying fan just being an air heater. I found a very intriguing orb robot that floated around the international space station, and thought it showed the key design of the robot dryers well. I shifted its colouring to black and added the cool aqua details to the robot, as well as shifting it’s eye colour to match. Then I used an image of a public toilet for the background. While it's obviously not a very polished image, I was unsure on what else I should create, so I kept it as it was. Although it’s not executed to a very professional look, I quite like how it turned out, and I think the robot looks cool, friendly, and helpful, which is exactly what I was going for. I used a few labels to point out key aspects of this design to ensure it fit the hero image criteria given. 

References

Wingler, W. (2017, August 24). Top 5 things to consider when designing an accessible bathroom for wheelchair users. Assistive Technology at Easter Seals Crossroads. https://www.eastersealstech.com/2014/06/11/top-5-things-consider-designing-accessible-bathroom-wheelchair-users/ 

The Times Editorial Board. (2017, September 16). Refusing to build public toilets doesn’t make homeless people go away. It creates a public health crisis. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-homeless-toilets-20170916-story.html 

Designing a bathroom for the disabled. (2020). Designing a Bathroom for the Disabled. https://www.kerasan.com/news/tips/designing-a-bathroom-for-the-disabled.html

The 10 Best Public Toilet Designs of 2017 - DesignCurial. (2017). The 10 Best Public Toilet Designs. http://www.designcurial.com/news/the-10-best-public-toilet-designs-of-2017-5971621/

Comfort Height vs Standard Toilet - Pros, Cons, Comparisons and Costs. (2020, April 2). Fixr.Com. https://www.fixr.com/comparisons/comfort-height-vs-standard-toilet#:%7E:text=A%20comfort%20height%20toilet%20is,inches%20from%20floor%20to%20seat. 

Hero image references

Q. (2017, July 28). Int-Ball: The cute floating Japanese camera on the ISS. YouTube. Retrieved 2021, from https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DojFNo19HYSo&psig=AOvVaw2hv9pq1zcmXqPQJFX_vBEk&ust=1634291731843000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAwQjhxqFwoTCIjB9bfRyfMCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAJ 

Banggood.com. (2021). 900W Mini Portable Electric Heater Fan Wall Outlet Warm Air Blower Heater for Home Office. Www.Banggood.Com. Retrieved 2021, from https://www.banggood.com/900W-Mini-Portable-Electric-Heater-Fan-Wall-Outlet-Warm-Air-Blower-Heater-for-Home-Office-p-1406387.html?cur_warehouse=CN&ID=224 

Team, L. (2021). [$28.01] Hand Operated Drones for Kids, Hands Free Motion Sensor Mini Drone, Easy Indoor UFO Toy Flying Ball Drone with LED Flowing Charging Cable, 3D Flip Toys Gift for Boys and Girls Helicopter. Lightinthebox.Com. Retrieved 2021, from https://www.lightinthebox.com/en/p/hand-operated-drones-for-kids-hands-free-motion-sensor-mini-drone-easy-indoor-ufo-toy-flying-ball-drone-with-led-flowing-charging-cable-3d-flip-toys_p7051069.html?currency=NZD&litb_from=paid_adwords_shopping&sku=1_6920&country_code=nz&utm_source=google_shopping&utm_medium=cpc&adword_mt=&adword_ct=394654249590&adword_kw=&adword_pos=&adword_pl=&adword_net=u&adword_tar=&adw_src_id=2356332580_7909332400_81019442126_pla-601772679752&gclid=Cj0KCQjwqp-LBhDQARIsAO0a6aLBWGot3LHoSGaM23gAOKA9_dRRmgjb80tmoSvUPxNo4KX-VAE56gIaApbJEALw_wcB 

Workbook References

A. (2014, August 17). Iron Man Suitcase GIF by hystericalbanana. Gfycat. Retrieved 2021, from https://gfycat.com/incomparablehatefulhind-programmerhumor-overwatch 

Farner, S. (2021, May 31). Destiny 2 companion apps: Our picks for the best. Gizjo. Retrieved 2021, from https://www.gizjo.com/destiny-2-companion-apps-our-picks-for-the-best-1846 

[harrybushelldesignblog]

DES231 Assignment 2 - The Future of Football marketing

INSIGHT: Football kits will be animated onto the wearer so they can rotate designs and the visible sponsor during the game by 2040 to increase the revenue of the sport. (by attracting multiple main shirt sponsorship deals at once, while decreasing the use of raw materials by all of the club's shirts being housed as one.) 

Explanation:

Why I believe this will happen:

Marketing is constantly growing in the football industry, both in terms of value and placement in general. Main shirt sponsors for big clubs in big leagues are increasing in value year by year, and the potential for clubs to have multiple main shirt sponsors at once would be a very attractive prospect to clubs, as it means more revenue and income for them, while advertisers have a greater chance at being seen by millions of people at a time. Along with this, being able to have multiple shirts in one will be better for the environment, and also allow consumers easier access to different colours of the shirt, as they can buy different colours for the shirt that they already own rather than getting a new shirt completely.

How this will work

While I don’t have the equipment or the abilities to create a yarn that can be animated on and change appearance, I will design concept shirts for this idea. These could include: different sponsors for different regions, different languages, different shirt designs etc. This idea will promote less waste within the football industry, which will help to grow sustainability within the game.  

Building my Visualisation 

Once I had finalized my insight, I began to develop ideas for a visualisation. The first thing I did was to develop some kits to be potentially used for my visualisation. I created 3 kits using fifa kit creator

My first idea was to formulate a storyboard that showed a transition of sponsors on a shirt.

I then decided that it would be better to have a transition phase between the shirts, so using photoshop effects I made one of the shirts a transition point.

I then began to think about creating the scenario itself, with my first idea being to formulate the kits onto a team lineup, with some of the kits showing different sponsors

However due to my limited drawing skills, I decided against using this.

Instead I developed further on the idea of football shirts becoming advertising boards, which was developed thanks to my chat with BootWizard.

I created an advertising board background on photoshop,

and decided that it would be the background for my visualisation, as it shows what a future scenario of football advertising could be both metaphorically and physically.

This led to me creating my final visualisation,

ESSAY for Visualisation plan

“Standard essay describing your future scenario with data to support your speculations based on research to date”

The football world is as much a business as it is a sport. The money and marketing side has been following an exponential increase since the game went professional. Nowadays, money rules the world. Financial takeovers and ridiculous sponsorship deals have led to clubs becoming world beaters, and critical assets to some of the biggest companies on the planet. My insight “Football kits will be animated onto the wearer so they can rotate designs and the visible sponsor during the game to increase the revenue of the sport by 2040” was formulated from data collected to date, that provides evidence on a continual exponential rise in the money for main shirt sponsors in Europe's top 5 leagues. Furthermore, it provides a solution to the continual increase in the cost of football shirts, with a 38 pound increase (adjusted for inflation) between 1993 and 2021 in shirt prices for popular clubs around the world, as shown by the data provided from footy.com.

This season alone the premier league aggregate value of main shirt sponsors is nearly 400 million euros a year, according to KPMG. Main shirt sponsors were introduced in the English game in 1974, and by 1987 every English league club had a main shirt sponsor. Manchester United alone have seen an increase of 39.5 million pounds in their main shirt sponsorship deals, with their deal with Vodafone in 2000 being valued at 7.5 million pounds a year, to their current deal with TeamViewer grossing them 47 million pounds annually. According to KPMG Football Benchmark “the total value of sponsorship across the big five leagues in 2020 is more than EUR 3.3bn p/a, with front-of-shirt sponsorship representing almost a third of this figure.”, meaning that almost 1.1bn euros are accumulated from main shirt sponsors. Furthermore, according to BR football “The ever-changing face of the football kit, then, is not just an evolution of modern shirt design and an extension of clothing technology into sport, but is a reflection of a shift in the status of merchandise and football itself in the eyes of football clubs, manufacturers and sponsors. With seemingly unstoppable momentum behind money-spinning sponsorship deals, it seems that football kits will continue to be at the center of football’s paradigm shift.” 

From all of this accumulated data, I formulated my future scenario, where football shirts are animated onto the wearer, and can change both their design and sponsor with the push of a button, or even be rotated on a timer. This would be revolutionary for income into the sport, as multiple main shirt sponsors, plus the potential for multiple designs that could be purchased within one shirt would allow the shown increase in shirt sponsor values to bring the clubs even more money, as well as provide a valuable decrease in wasted raw material. The shirts would function as an advertising board, but could also have sponsors removed for recreational wear. Consumers could purchase designs separately and create their own animated shirt or purchase and wear their favourites from their clubs. These designs would be available for cheaper prices, as no money would be spent on the material of the shirts after the animated shirt is purchased. This would please fans, who over recent years have raised complaints on the increasing costs of football shirts. 

IMPORTANT - Change of insight to fit Assignment 3

After some final conversation with Xin before submission, I came to a realisation that my insight was too streamlined, and that I had practically created an artifact already in my visualisation and insight, rather than a scenario. Due to this, I changed my insight to something more broad, to allow me to approach other potential artefacts in assignment 3. I changed my insight to “The advertising, sponsorship and marketing side of football will have caused equipment to be practical advertising boards by 2040 in order to increase income” in order to allow this. However, due to the lateness of this realisation, I did not have time to change my visualisation. Despite this, I still believe that my visualisation is of a scenario as well as an artifact, as it shows what the scenario depicted by my insight, by providing a visualisation of what advertisement could look like in my future scenario, as well as offering a potential artefact in the form of the shirts themselves. Due to this, I am still confident that my visualisation fits the assignment criteria, and therefore am not worried that I didn’t have enough time to change it. Furthermore, due to my research for this assignment into the accidental creation of a potential artifact, I most likely will not pursue the creation of these shirts for assignment 3, in order to allow a different direction to be taken to ensure that assignment 2 and 3 aren’t incredibly similar.

By Harry Bushell

[harrybushelldesignblog]

DES240 Assignment 3

Blog Post: 

First Week - Our first week of Assignment 3 consisted of forming pairs, allocating roles, and planning the project through selecting a sustainable development goal and a statistic to suit. With this we had to choose one of our previously researched statistics. After forming pairs, I waited a couple days to hopefully discuss the project and how we would approach it as a team, however my partner was unable to participate in this assignment so, after discussion with Krishna and Caleb, we decided it was best for me to begin the assignment alone. With this, I chose my sustainable development goal and statistic from the work I did for assignment 2, which were “Good Health and Wellbeing” focusing on obesity and the statistic that “1 in 3 NZ adults are obese”. I then began research on different types of interactions to look into, as well as creating some basic potential interactions using GameMaker8.1 software and incorporating the assets I previously created for assignment 2. The first interaction I made was a simple side scrolling game where the user was a shopping cart and had to collect healthy foods to continue going while avoiding unhealthy foods which would stop the cart from moving. I changed this to a click collection game as I found the first to be too game-like and not provide much insight into my chosen statistic. The click and collect game focused on the user clicking on fast moving foods, avoiding selecting unhealthy ones while selecting healthy ones for points. This interaction was created to instill a visual reward for selecting healthy foods, and hopefully create a mindset that drives the user to select healthy foods over unhealthy ones. I chose to focus on the art direction of the assignment, and began working further on this in week 2.  

Second Week - After deciding on what to do with this assignment on my own, I began to look into other directions to take on my chosen statistic that addresses different parts of the problem rather than the one I approached in assignment 2. I researched other causes of obesity, and potential solutions to the problem. With this, I found that a lot of the blame on obesity, especially in young adults comes in the form of advertisement. Unhealthy food is often partnered with recognisable figures like those from Disney. Furthermore, they are often in brightly coloured eye-catching packaging. The problem is addressed well in this quote from Harvard “There’s an appetite to clamp down on unhealthy food marketed to kids. Cartoon-covered packaging for sugary cereals, Disney-branded biscuits with collectible magnets, TV ads for unhealthy products at peak viewing times for children. Not to mention, junk food marketing online and fast-food joints sponsoring sports teams. It’s almost impossible to avoid unhealthy food being peddled to kids. Children are a lucrative market for food companies. Kids not only influence what their parents buy (pester power), marketers also bank on shoppers sticking to buying habits they acquired when they were young.“ With this, I decided that I would pursue an interaction based on food advertising, and after discussion with Jacky, we decided that an informative interaction using the mouse and the code incorporated in quiz 2 was the way to go. 

Third Week - Week three consisted of mostly asset building. After discussion with Jacky, I've decided on using the magnifying glass as my interaction, and it will follow the mouse movements to show the real statistics of the foods present. We discussed creating a memory game that is similar to the card game "Memory" except you get 10 seconds to move the magnifying glass around each package before they are randomly spread out on a supermarket shelf. Going off the concept formulated in week two, I started creating my own packaged foods to use for the remainder of my project. After further discussion with Jacky, we decided that I should create 10 different packages, 7 of which will be unhealthy and brightly coloured, while 3 will be healthy and calmly coloured. I spent a fair amount of time trying to come up with names for my pretend products, with which I created these names for unhealthy products: Bambi bites, Aero-Planes, bar O'Choco, Bruce Bar, Elixir Energy, Copa Crunch, Fizzy Foxes. I also created these names for Healthy products: B-Oat bar, Granola Gold, Sacred Smoothie. I built all of the assets on photoshop, and while the quality isn’t great, I found it quite a fun learning experience and it definitely improved my photoshop abilities. Along with my assets, I built a shelving unit using photoshop to then create a storyboard. I also created mystery copies of my assets that showed their silhouettes but completely blacked out with a question mark present on them. After discussion with Krishna I decided to use the same mystery silhouette for all of them, so it added a further level of difficulty in identifying each product. The two storyboards I created showed how the interaction would appear, with the 10 products shown scattered around the shelving unit, and then being replaced by the mystery silhouettes.  

Fourth Week - Week four began with analysis of the feedback I received from discussion with Krishna. We talked about what needed to be done heading into the fourth and final week of this assignment, and what I needed to do for submission. Tidying up my graphics was the first thing we discussed, and hopefully I can improve on them with photoshop, although I haven't figured out how I'll do that as of yet. I also need to create cleaner storyboards to better show how the interaction would work, as since the interaction hasn’t actually been coded, the storyboard is the best way for me to show how this interaction would work. We decided on creating an interaction that presents the shelf with the stock on it, then takes it away after a period of time and replaces everything with uniform mystery boxes. Then the interaction will ask the user to select 5 items that they remember to approach how shopper bias will promote shoppers to remember and select the more colourful appealing packaging. I created another storyboard, this time with every single object covered by the same mystery box silhouette, as well as adding some fake boxes that cover nothing in order to force the user to focus more on their memory rather than just randomly selecting boxes. This should show the impact of this style of advertising on consumers, as the interaction will hypothetically show that the bright colourful packaging will catch the eye of the user first and thus be more memorable when all of the products are taken away. After figuring out how the final interaction would work, I began work on cleaning up my assets. I kept the plain shelving background so that it doesn’t distract the user from the colourful products shelved on it, as well as cleaning up my assets in order for the interaction to have a cleaner look. I also created a few more assets to fill out the shelves a bit more and allow the types of objects to be grouped together per shelf. I then decided that I would change the interaction slightly, and have the user drag their 5 remembered items into a shopping basket placed on screen, which, once was full of 5 items, would end the interaction and reveal what items were selected and what percentage of people chose said item. I changed the colour of the background to something lighter and kinder on the eye, while still not distracting from the shelves. Then, after some surveying of my family, I created a title and end page for the interaction, with the end page showing the percentage of how often the items you picked are chosen by others (percentages calculated from the surveys of my family) which provides valuable information on consumer bias and if colourful packaging really influences what is chosen. I also added a 10 second timer to the first part of the interaction. I decided to remove the randomly placed extra boxes in order to avoid user confusion. 

After these 4 weeks, my project was complete. I created a slideshow and video to talk about what I had made, the process I followed, what was iterated and changed, as well as to show the interaction itself. This can be found here 

By Harry Bushell

Script for Video

Topic

Introduction of myself and my chosen topic, why it is important - 

Hi guys, my name is Harry Bushell and I chose to pursue good health and well-being as my sustainable development goal for this assignment. Good health and well-being is a growing focal point of modern day life, and as mental health amongst other life struggles are being focused on more and more as they should be, I found this goal to be a highly valuable opportunity to work on for this semester. Within this SDG, I chose to focus on obesity in New Zealand, more to the point, the statistic that 1 in 3 NZ adults (age 15 and above) are clinically obese. Something that affects one third of our nation's adult population is obviously very important, and with obesity leading to other health problems and premature death in 25% of its victims, I believe it to be a very important challenge faced by not only New Zealand but the world.

Process

Approach to the project  - 

My approach to this semester as a whole has been very cautious, as my chosen subject is quite sensitive. With this in mind, all of my work thus far has focused away from sensitive areas of obesity and instead shed a lighthearted, friendly view on the problem. For example, the use of pixelated food characters for assignment 2. For this project in particular, I chose to continue along this path of keeping it friendly in order to maintain respect and mana for my chosen issue. 

Key Milestones / Talk through each week - 

Week 1 - Initially, I researched into different interactions and created some basic interactions using the characters I created previously. This interaction worked like … while this one worked like … After discussion with Caleb, I decided it would be best to approach another art style and create different assets for this assignment in order to be able to address a different part of the problem.

Week 2 - With this, I decided to address another common cause of obesity in NZ. After some research, I decided to focus similarly on the food concept, but instead choosing to address the advertising and marketing of foods rather than the availability of them. With this in mind, I began to design some draft assets so that I could receive feedback on their appearance and such. I also researched different interactions and after discussion with Jacky, I decided that an informative mouse dragging interaction was what I wanted to work on moving forward. 

Week 3 - The process for week 3 was clear, I needed to create 10 or so assets to display and use for storyboards. So, I built 7 assets based on unhealthy foods and 3 based on healthy foods, using names and concepts I created myself as well as from responses from my peers. Jacky and I discussed creating a memory game similar to the card game with the same name. With this in mind I created some mystery silhouettes of my products and placed them on a shelving unit to create a storyboard showing how the interaction could appear.

Week 4 - Week 4’s process was by far the most hectic. Submission week meant that everything had to be ready. After talking with Krishna, he said that I needed to clean up my assets and create a full storyboard showing how the interaction would work entirely. In terms of cleaning up my assets, I attempted to make them all appear 3D through shading and shaping, as well as creating some new ones to further the engagement of the interaction with the user. These 3 new assets were named: Camel Cashews, Arctic Foxes, and RED energy and ensured that each shelf had 1 healthy option and at least 2 unhealthy. I initially formed the first storyboard with extra fake boxes to make sure the user memorised the location of the products and didn’t just choose randomly, but I later removed these in order to avoid confusion. The process then led me to building introduction and conclusion pages as well as incorporating a timer and a target for the boxes to be dragged into. Finally, I created this slideshow for the final deliverable of the assignment and with that, the process was mostly complete.   

 Division of tasks and roles 

What my role was and how I worked with it on my own - Considering I had to approach this assignment on my own, role and task division was pretty simple. Although to begin with I worked both on the design side and technical side of this assignment, I later focused solely on the design side after discussion with Caleb and Krishna. This meant that my role was to create all of the assets and the storyboards, as well as how they would work in the interaction and the story behind the interaction itself. I also did the research behind my chosen subject, and used it to formulate the interaction itself. Working on my own offered both positives and negatives when it came to this assignment. On the positive side, I was able to create something that I wanted to create and didn’t have to worry about miscommunication. On the negative side it meant that I missed out on valuable teamwork practice, and potential insights that I wouldn’t have thought of myself.

Iterative studies 

Research iterations, what I changed and why - For the research part of this assignment, I went through many iterative changes. From my initial concept of poor food knowledge and availability, I changed it to the impacts of food advertising and package marketing. This change came due to constant research which was found to point a lot of the blame of obesity, especially in young adults, to the packaging and advertising of unhealthy foods. Furthermore, after greater research I decided that incorporating a way of identifying consumer bias that would otherwise go unnoticed was a valuable iteration to  my interaction. This resulted in the creation of the outro page of the interaction showing statistics and percentages of packages chosen, providing evidence to back up the claims that package design and advertising results in consumer bias.   

Interaction iterations, what I changed and why - My interaction also went through a lot of iteration. The first interaction I made was a simple side scrolling game where the user was a shopping cart and had to collect healthy foods to continue going while avoiding unhealthy foods which would stop the cart from moving. I changed this to a click collection game as I found the first to be too game-like and not provide much insight into my chosen statistic. The click and collect game focused on the user clicking on fast moving foods, avoiding selecting unhealthy ones while selecting healthy ones for points. This interaction was created to instill a visual reward for selecting healthy foods, and hopefully create a mindset that drives the user to select healthy foods over unhealthy ones. I enjoyed this concept, however I decided that it focused very similarly on the problem I addressed in assignment 2. This resulted in another change that led to the initial iteration of my final interaction. Annoyingly, I found that using a shelf system worked best for this interaction, which linked closely to the shelving system used in assignment 2. Despite this similarity between the two, I still considered the shelving idea as the best way to approach this interaction. I changed the drag and drop concept from what was originally a magnifying glass game where you identified the unhealthy packaging through inspecting it behind a hidden silhouette, into an interaction that both worked the users memory and collected data on consumer bias, which resulted in the final iteration of the interaction.   

Asset iterations, what I changed and why - My assets went through iteration in appearance mostly, changing them from 2D flat shapes to more appealing 3D appearing shapes to increase the realism of the user experience and make the interaction nicer to look at. However my relatively basic photoshop abilities resulted in some of the assets undergoing less iteration than I would’ve liked, as they still appear obviously drawn rather than realistic. In the future I would spend more time perfecting my photoshop skills in order to allow these assets to appear photo-realistic so that the interaction offers a greater experience. 

Narrative 

Underlying theme/story and how it influenced my interaction and designs - The underlying story of my interaction was one about both the power of advertisement and consumer bias. It addressed the claim that colourful packaging instils poor consumer behaviours into children and young adults that they will carry through their lives, resulting in appealing unhealthy foods being chosen over less appealing healthy options.  

Demonstration of interaction - Talk through the interaction and what is happening

Project Delivery and Learnings

Areas of success - I think that my interaction was successful in following the theme I wanted it to, and that it works to test a users consumer bias as well as compare it to others in order for the user to potentially train their eyes to avoid being tricked by marketing and to instead remember healthier packaging options to improve their consumer behaviours. 

Areas of improvement - However I think that there are lots of areas of improvement in my interaction. Most notably how it appears. Despite being the art director and focusing on the art style of this assignment, I’m still not 100% happy with how some of my assets turned out, and I think that the appearance of my interaction still has room for improvement.

Closing statement - Closing off this assignment, I very much enjoyed my process. Designing product graphics and coming up with fun names was something that appealed to me, and the assignment helped me improve my photoshop skills massively. Furthermore the help from you guys as my lecturers was awesome, and the feedback I received helped me tremendously while approaching this assignment without a partner. Thank you guys so much, and thank you for listening! 

References

RNZ. (2019, October 13). The true cost of a disordered food system: a panel discussion. https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/otago-university-panel-discussions/story/2018716711/the-true-cost-of-a-disordered-food-system-a-panel-discussion

Obesity Prevention Strategies. (2016, April 12). Obesity Prevention Source. https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-prevention/#:%7E:text=Choosing%20healthier%20foods%20(whole%20grains,%2C%20and%20other%20%E2%80%9Csit%20time%E2%80%9D

Obesity statistics. (2020). Ministry of Health NZ. https://www.health.govt.nz/nz-health-statistics/health-statistics-and-data-sets/obesity-statistics