This week in digital making, we were focusing on scanning our faces to create OBJ & STL files that could be uploaded to, cleaned up, and edited in software like Tinkercad, and printed into our first real personal 3D prints for the class. I learned how to scan (and be scanned) using the portable iPad scanner in the lab, how to clean up and edit a 3D scan, and how to export files to be printed by the Makerbot. As we were asked to get creative with what we decided to do with our face scan, I decided to add a little loop to the top of my head and print out a mini-keychain of my face for my house keys. It took a few attempts to get the bottom to flatten out so it would print right, but finally toward the end of class I was able to get my print to start. It took about half an hour and looked awesome when it was done, but as soon as I tried putting a keyring through the hole, it cracked off. L Next time I need to either make the loop thicker or make a hole through my head so it will be more stable.

Aside from the hands-on learning by doing we had happening with our face scanning process, the lab guru, Ryan, talked to us a bit about the science behind 3D scanning and modeling, which I found quite interesting. We were also lucky enough to have Professor Rindfleisch, the teacher of the Making Things course at the lab, come in and talk to us a little about what their class is doing as well as his research into 3D printing (particularly about how people perceive objects they’ve printed as being more valuable than objects they are just given.)

Our learning in the weeks class made me feel a lot more prepared to try printing and experimenting with stuff on my own and helped me learn a lot about how to make the printing process go more smoothly next time I want to try something out. It also helped give me a better idea of the science behind 3D printing and what might be in store for the future of the industry, particularly regarding what is possible as far as customization and running your own small business around 3D printing.

Now that I’ve finally had a chance to print something out on my own, I feel like I’m ready to spend some time on my own in the lab and continue to build my 3d modeling and printing skills. I’m looking forward to doing some cool stuff in the coming weeks!

An artistic picture of our improving distracted driving interview results.

This week our class participated in a design thinking workshop put on by leaders of the Design for America club here at UIUC.   I’ve participated in a number of design thinking workshops in the past; once in my User Oriented Collaborative Design class, once through the Social Entrepreneurship Club on Semester at Sea, and once through the web design course I took at Designation.

Since I’ve already done it so many times, you might think I’m a design thinking workshopped out, however, I am far from it. It’s always useful (and fun) to have a refresher on design thinking, because I feel like each group I’ve done it with has approached it differently and taught me something new about the topic. This isn’t just because they have each applied design thinking to a different topic (in this case it was how we can improve the driving experience), but also because they all have used slightly different techniques and processes to get to the final solution. In this case, for example, we used “How Can We?”, a fill in the blank exercise kind of like Mad Libs to come up with problem statements to base our final prototype around. We also did a funny little exercise called “What’s in the Box” and a speed prototyping exercise where we had to come up with a prototype for the solution to another more goofy problem that we came up with by pulling design cards from a pile (our class pulled cards to make the problem how to help Girl Scouts at a playground fly) to “warm up” for the brainstorming and prototyping parts of the class. I thought this was particularly helpful in making me feel safe to bring up crazier ideas around my team and in preparing some of my classmates who had never gone through a process like this before for what was in store for them.

These games made it a lot easier for the student who might feel like they’re not creative or not really designers feel comfortable and excited about the design process, and I’m definitely going to suggest using them in any design thinking process I might be involved in in the future. I’m very glad we had a chance to learn more about design thinking in this class, because there is definitely a huge connection between solving problems on a personal level and the using the tools we are learning about in this class to make things. Being able to create products that are customized for personal use and considering a future where creating and developing products customized to individual needs is a lot more prevalent means design thinking is just going to become more and more important. I’m happy that we were able to spend a whole class on the topic and am looking forward to being able to bring up some of the concepts with the students I work on future projects with throughout this semester as well as seeing how my classmates apply design thinking in their individual work.