The prompt for this project was very open ended. "Make a fictional technology." It was a group project and the idea was to make something that didn't exist, and in the process start to use the tools of the BDW, classmates, and a design sensibility to present our ideas.
I was in a group with Vira Behnam Roudsari, a senior in engineering and Athyuttam Eleti, a sophomore in computer science.
We made the SeaCircle S5 for underwater transportation, and imagined a world that it would exist in.
Stage 1 - Brainstorming and 1st Presentation
The project started with a workshop on the way that candles compare to LED lights (link). And then we split off into groups to work on our fictional tech. We threw around a lot of ideas about different uses of light, hand held devices,biotech, Elon Musk, and transportation and called it a day.
At our next meeting we revisited the idea of making a form of underwater transportation that uses a field of light to evaporate the water surrounding the user, creating a bubble of oxygen for them to breathe in. It was the best of the bunch so we went with it.
The idea was that a sleek carbon fiber ring would go around the users waist, either by them stepping into it or putting it over their head. Once inside, the rind would project a field of light upward and downward, creating a cylinder around the user. This cylinder of air would allowed the user to breathe underwater. The ring would also have steering controls and a self driving GPS system.
We then thought some about exactly how/when/why this kind of transportation would be needed. We decided that it was technology for a very futuristic world where people moved their homes or second homes to colonies under the sea and needed transportation to get there. We imagined "sea roads" that were charted out so people could get places and not disturb the sea life too much, like high ways. We imagined "Sea Ports" as the places that people got onto or into their see transportation to travel underwater. We imagined that there were other forms of mass sea transit (think buses or planes) that people boarded at the Sea Port and took down. Our technology was like the Model-T, a personal transport that you could take when you wanted, where you wanted, how you wanted.
Then we worked on how to pitch it for our first presentation. We knew that there were a lot of holes in our project and questions that we were just jumping over, so we decided to pitch our idea by just throwing everyone into this world where this technology already exists in the hopes that people would imagine solutions to the holes in our story on their own.
So we gave our technology/the company that produced it a fancy name: "Sea Circle"
We followed the lead of an Apple launch in our aesthetic and called our model the SeaCircle C5, an obvious follow up and improvement on the previous models. This iteration would be adding in some key features like an operating system, named Phe, would talk to the user as they moved around and speed increases.
Made solid works models of the vehicle.
We mocked up some quotes about our company shaking up the Sea Transport industry.
We made a prototype of the SeaCircle C5 using foam core, shiny silver paper, and LED lights.
And Atty and I (Vira had her last RISD class that day and had to miss) as the founders of the company.
The feedback we got was the develop the technology of the product as well as the world that it exists in more. How did we get to the point of using this technology? What exactly is is for? Shallow water travel? Deep sea diving? How does the UV ray tech replenish O2 to sustain healthy air quality? How do you steer? How is it propelled? Is it one person only? Where do you put your things if you are traveling to your sumer home? How do you get into it?
