#siiri006

[designumn2016]

Final Reflection

Well here’s my last reflection (and probably the last time I’ll ever find myself on Tumblr). It’s been a good semester which culminated in a really interesting final project for our team about protecting honeybees. As a former beekeeper I was thrilled to be assigned this project as I think the well-being of honeybees is a truly important issue. Also, if anyone here is ever interested in trying out beekeeping, shoot me an email at [email protected] and I’d love to chat!

Overall, it’s been cool to look at a wide range of challenges throughout the semester and brainstorm solutions. I think the concept of divergent/convergent thinking is especially powerful and is a method that I hope to incorporate more into my student group as well into my own life. I also enjoyed hearing from a speaker each week about a variety of topics. Although I’m not a Design major, I will be doing plenty of designing throughout my career as a chemical engineering. While most of this design process tends to be technical in nature, I still think that the ideas of this class will benefit me going forward into my career.

I hope everyone had a good semester and best of luck on finals!

[designumn2016]

Project 3 and Site Visit

This week was filled with planning for Project 3. On Monday, we further developed our honeybee design proposal by focusing in on a honeybee community day which will educate people about honeybees in a fun, family-friendly environment. More importantly, it will give people ways to help including bee-friendly gardening and learning about how they can take up beekeeping themselves. We showcased this idea to another group and got some good feedback that we hope to incorporate into our design as well.

On Wednesday, we did a site visit to the U of M St. Paul Campus. We went to Hodson Hall which houses the Department of Entomology. Unfortunately, everyone who worked with honeybees was too busy installing packages of honeybees and tending overwintered beehives to be able to meet with our group. Instead, we wondered around the hall, checked out a few posters we found, and talked to a couple of professors who worked with other kinds of insects.

We’ve split up our community day into different events and activities and now each person in the group is working to develop their respective event or activity.

[designumn2016]

Reflection - Project 3 Planning

This week, we had ample time to brainstorm the problem we’re tackling for Project 3. Our problem is that we need to protect honeybees since they are vital to food supply. I was really excited to be given this prompt since I was a beekeeper and kept honeybees for a number of years before coming to college. In addition, I think this problem is a very important one to solve as honeybees are responsible for pollinating one third of the food we consume in the US. Honeybees have been dying at alarming rates all around the world for years now from a mysterious phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). Researchers are working to try and figure out the cause of CCD as it is still unknown. 

Since our group won’t be able to solve CCD in a few weeks, we plan on taking a different angle. Many people know that honeybees are in peril, but are unsure of what they can do to help. Our group would like to help people learn more and get involved. A few possibilities are offering beekeeping classes for urban rooftop beekeeping, partnering with a flower company to make seed starting mixes to grow bee-friendly gardens, and creating a video game that allows people to become virtual beekeepers, plant gardens, and learn more about honeybees. I’m looking forward to our field trip next week and further exploring some of our ideas and creating a viable plan.

[designumn2016]

Glitch and Project 3

The presentation about Glitch provided an interesting perspective about video games. As someone who occasionally plays video games when I should be working on something else, I tend to view them as a waste of time and something that should be avoided as much as possible. However, it was interesting to see how video games can also be used to bring people together and form friendships as well as serve as a learning tool.

As we move into Project 3, it would be interesting to explore the possibility of using a video game as an educational tool as part of our effort to protect honeybees. Honeybees are often blamed for stings that they had nothing to do with, and as a result people tend to be afraid of bees and view them as something that belongs in a rural setting. A video game could allow people to keep beehives in the city (like on rooftops) and show the user just how doable and non-intrusive this process can be all while helping pollinate trees and flowers throughout the city and yielding a harvest of delicious honey. I think that a video game like this could be very helpful towards improving the public perception of honeybees and encouraging more people to consider beekeeping, even if they live in a city.

[designumn2016]

Project 2 Presentations

It was really enjoyable having an opportunity to see what kinds of problems other teams chose to tackle. In this area there truly was a wide variety of ideas. It was even more interesting to see the prototypes and solutions that people came up with to solve the aforementioned problems. Finally, it was great to get some feedback on our problem, prototype, and presentation.

[designumn2016]

Azul 7 Speaker (Reflection 9 I think)

The talk from Lisa Helminiak today was very interesting. I was especially fascinated by the idea of biomimicry. Although the example of velcro was familiar to me, the buildings inspired by termite hills and wind turbine inspired by a whale’s fin were new examples. A big part of design is inspiration - in particular, inspiration that breaks the mold of traditional thinking. Looking to nature is a fantastic way of doing this. For example, plants effortlessly sequester carbon dioxide and produce sugar, cellulose, oxygen, and other useful materials and thus provide a radically different way of working than the energy intensive methods we use to produce similar compounds. I looked into examples of biomimicry a bit more and found some really neat examples such as adhesives inspired by gecko feet, no refrigeration vaccines inspired by Tardigrade organisms, and brighter LEDs inspired by the firefly. Here’s the link if anyone’s interested: http://www.bloomberg.com/slideshow/2013-08-18/14-smart-inventions-inspired-by-nature-biomimicry.html 

While nature is quite ingenious in its elegant solutions to many problems, it is equally important that the designer recognize those solutions and brainstorm how the idea could be applied in a design - a design that often may be completely different than the natural organism being examined. This process takes good powers of observation to notice the solution as well as divergent thinking to apply the idea to a design. Overall, I think that biomimicry is poised to become a critical role as designers, scientists, and engineers look to nature as a way to think outside the box, improve existing designs, and create radically new ones. While our prototype for the group project is already pretty set, it will be interesting to brainstorm how biomimicry could be applied to a future product.

[designumn2016]

Reflection 8

As discussed throughout last week, prototyping is an integral part of the design process. It allows the designer or design team to test out the overall viability of the design and ask themselves if the product is a good one. It allows the designer to spot problems that may have been overlooked in the design but are apparent in the product. Finally, prototyping allows the designer to show a tangible product to target users and colleagues thereby obtaining valuable feedback.

For our project, we have loosely planned out our first prototype and are ready to put it together soon so that we can test, evaluate, and receive feedback thereby allowing us to refine our product.

[designumn2016]

Reflection 6

I thought that the talk on diversity in design on Wednesday was very interesting. Although I was aware of diversity as an important topic in our society, I never thought about how design could play a part in promoting diversity. I think this can become apparent in two ways. First, when assembling a design team to tackle a problem, it is beneficial to assemble as diverse of a team as possible. This can include individuals from different majors, different cultures, different genders, etc. The result is a design team that will tend to think about the problem and resulting solution with a broader lens than would occur with a non-diverse design team. Second, when designing a product, one can examine whether it is only designed with the majority in mind or if it also serves minority or underrepresented groups. I think that this second consideration can often be achieved when the first consideration of assembling a diverse design team is taken seriously.