Week 14: Bloom is almost finished!
It’s Friday! The final day to complete our prototype, and it’s exciting as the prototype was almost finished. All that was left was too retest the water movement to open flowers, paint and seal watering can, and final stitching to design of flower. Sophia and Hanako were so impressed with what Beth, Huan and Sarah had come up with, and it showed that a few simple elements changed the shape of the flower into the orchid.
However, while the design had finally come together, testing if the flower would open with new weight was a struggle. This came down to how much water would now be in the watering can to be able to push the flower open, which might need a few more tests on Tuesday next week to be 100% sure the flower will open. Beth, Sophia and Huan continued to test levels and distribution of weight on top of flower, and finally the flower opened, though to get the flower to close was much more trickier than we thought as some tests opening and closing worked, while others did not. Beth realised this was because one petal kept moving to one side, putting more weight on that side and making it get caught as the flower tried to come back down again. Sophia then suggested using ribbon to tie the petal in place. This proved to work, but Huan suggested more tests would need to be made just to be sure this will work the way we want it too. Evidently though, each team member now understands how each other works and also now works together to solve any problems, saying yes to suggestions and trying them our rather than saying no to them. After these tests, we went back to the design of flower testing how it would open and close and if there was any final touches we could make. Hanako suggested covering up the black metal in the middle as it still looked unfinished and unappealing. To hide this, Beth suggested using the remainder of our purple material to simple place it over like a cloth. This was such a simple solution that worked really well. Evidently, as our team was closer to finishing and much more confident in our design when compared to Tuesday, each memeber worked more smoothly with each other for greater productiveness as worry was eased and changes were made. Now all thats left to do is design our exhibition layout and do our finally tests on the prototype!









