P1 research: Design a small mobile low voltage light

There are 8 topics: Major retail, Industrial products and trades, Innovation, Ethical opportunities, Battery technology, Bulbs, Alternative energy, and Construction and mechanical construction. My group was placed in the Innovation category.

So, what breeds innovation?
Here, looking at what's already been done, people pushing boundaries and the potential with new materials and technologies, there's so many exciting possibilities for concept development! One possible objective was making a light that was dark sky friendly. Something that won't create light pollution and be too harsh, but it would be enough to be usable and at the same time not just for dim ambient purposes.

I also really enjoyed discovering the Solskin, designed by Hrafnkell Birgisson. It involves an old icelandic folk tale as the inspiration for the product. I love stories!

Is this process effective?

We are such visual learners, we learn first with our eyes and making mental patterns, and second we learn with our hands. Sometimes, it's the other way around. Anyway, as simple as it may seem to categorize information who are we to judge what belong where. Sometimes we disagree, but in the end, the product still ends up somewhere on the board under some category. Which are our core values? What are the constraints we want to keep and which ones can we be flexible with? Is this helping us build better connections? This map got wiped out and redone at least four times. I'm not sure if we agreed on every iteration, but maybe it was the process of experimenting with different categories and rearranging them to understand them in other contexts were we able to make the clutter more understandable for us and others.

 

2 day project

 

This was a dinky two day project that I think was a secret diagnostic test of our CAD and rendering skills. There isn't really much to it, we wanted facets and discovered how stupidly complex it was to create a faceted ring on solidworks. Luckily chamfers worked just as well visually...!

Ottawa Neighbourhood Services silent auction

Our first class coming back from the break was a two day project. The task was to go to Ottawa Neighbourhood Services (like a Goodwill/value village/salvation army) and spend no more than $5. Then we were to turn it into something else, or make it better and then silent auction it off for a charity. I made a toy piano, which I fell in love with and then auctioned it off to myself. During the final crunch of the toy piano making, I was in a rush (obviously) and glued the legs on backwards! I didn't notice until my friend who had been helping me put the whole thing together yelled at me for ruining the final touch lol.

tube bending!

For mass production class, we learned about tube bending. Our project was to design a half scale bicycle rack. This was fun because we had a non standard curve which meant that we had to devise a different way to bend the tube without using the standard 2" radius tube bender things. Some students even bent their metal tubes around the architecture pillars.

Anyway my partner and I chose to design a leaf bicycle rack that sprouts from the ground. Soooo eco-themed!

bending a metal tube is easy peasy

thermoforming!

For our mass pro class we learned about thermoforming. Now that I know about it and its process, I see it being used everywhere.

 

Anyway for our group, we decided to make a food box. We picked the logo design for this year's tee-shirt, put it in CAD and sent it to the CNC machine. I was pretty glad we did it that way because the CNC is so much faster and you can get all sorts of cool things cut out of the wood vs making the mold by hand (which is what many of my classmates were doing)
The first time seeing the thermoforming machine work its magic was was soooo fascinating. After the 6th time however, not so much. Actually, for our first trial run of the lid, we couldn't get the plastic off the mold. All three shop technitions had to pull on it...Two holding the plastic and one holding the wood mold. In the end I think we had to cut it out. From then on, we used a demolding spray thing which helped a LOT. hehe.

Teagan!

I''m slowly trying to restock this blog lol, so to continue the story, I ended up choosing the name Teagan. Partly because it has the word Tea in it, and partly becauase I was listening to Teagan and Sara and talking to my friend Sara.

Anyway, here are my final boards. I wish I pushed the idea further, but I think I would have discovered that it was already manufactured or on its way to be manufactured by somebody else. Because this year I found someone with the exact same product -- in material and proportion. : (    great minds think alike? maybe?

problem statement, specs, use cycle:

 

I think this also marks the first time I've used hypershot to render and photoshop to add things to my work (like tea and water and leaves).

Teagan?

My latest project is to solve an everyday problem. I decided to tackle the tea making process... Anyway I'm currently working on my boards, and I'm in need of a name.. Currently my list has been shortened down to:
*Teagan
*thea
*tia
*toro
*ros
*tummus

Perhaps I should lucky draw it.

Giraffe Elastic Holder

To be completely honest, I wanted to make a giraffe. But, seeing what everyone else had been able to come up with has gotten me wishing I did something else too... I am going to be many giraffes indebt by trading my work for theirs.

making jig, sanding those curves are like pulling teeth

This assignment was just a learning process for using thermoplastic, so I tried all sorts of things. But next time, I'm using a router to cut my acrylic and measuring 3x before cutting 1x so I don't make 5 in order to achieve 2. And, this project was fun. I think everyone enjoyed it. I want to make more ..stuff!

A Study in Pink+ and a bubblegum Narwhal

I had extra paint left over that I had mixed. Why let it go to waste?

Summer events poster, Mealserving Info Brochure

Although this was via voluntary basis, it has proved to be a good opportunity for me to learn inDesign (which is still more frustrating than fun) and Illustrator. Here are a few posters. One was for summer events, and I did three out of six. I only posted the three I did. The second is a brochure about Buddhist food etiquette. enjoy!