Week 2 (25.01 - 29.01)
This week we iterated on our design ideas. We dissected them and our design opportunities and were trying to decide on the ideas we like the most.
Monday, 25.01
After Monday’s coaching we ended up with some sort of an impasse. We came up with 5 design ideas:
1. Communicative sensor.
2. Shake my leaves.
3. Automatic feeder.
4. Info cube.
5. Smell the flowers.
During the coaching, Clint drew our attention to the fact, that all our design ideas are based on one thing: sensor. Moreover, we noticed that despite the fact that our design opportunities are about communication with a plant, our design concepts give mainly an opportunity to receive information about a plant’s state and we somehow lack the communication part itself. We decided to focus on creating an opportunity to develop a bilateral relationship between a plant and its owner.
Wednesday, 27.01
We did a lot of brainstorming that day. We tried different techniques, like random input, crazy eight and the one that Patrycja knew from her another course: each of us had 2 minutes to write down everything what comes to her/his mind about the key words: ‘pleasant communication’ and ‘unpleasant communication’. We decided to stick to the two design opportunities we had chosen earlier:
6. HMW make the plants suffering more tangible?
7. HMW make people feel more connected and dedicated to their plants?
However, we strongly felt that we reached an impasse, we had no new ideas and we couldn’t come up with anything new. I felt exhausted from brainstorming and lost my vibe. Suddenly, Sanna came up with this idea about the teaching pot for kids, but it also raised our doubts, because we don’t have any insights when it comes to kids taking care of plants. We decided on contacting Clint about our doubts.
Friday, 29.01
We iterated on our design ideas and as some new ideas arose during brainstorming, we decided on five new ones, which we will present to Clint on Monday. We came up with a new idea of the teaching pot, targeted to kids and a transparent pot with diodes, which show the level of humidity in the pot. We still don’t know if going back to research when it comes to the teaching pot, makes sense, but we really like our other ideas.
We were also working on frameworks, which was hard, because we couldn’t understand what a framework actually is. After a lot of googling, we decided to create a framework in a form a flow chart, which shows our work flow.
Lab Training
This week we had an introduction to MAU workshop, laser cutting and vector graphics. It was online and I have to admit, that I was very disappointed with its form. I know that MAU and teachers did the best they could, but this kind of introduction was kind of worthless, because I would need another, the proper one, when I find myself in the workshop one day.
However, I was really amazed by the size and equipment of the workshop and I am really looking forward to visiting it. I am quite lucky though, because I have a 3d printer at home, which I can use for our project. However, my classmates feel that because of covid, their possibilities are very restricted.
