It is hard to believe that there is one week left before our final presentation. All the teams have come a long way from their first prototype. As per our group, we have been very busy in making the final testing circuit, 3-D printed band and the program for the software. When it comes to functionality all three three parts work perfectly on their own all we have to do is put them all together and start with the testing part.

Additionally, for testing, we have convinced our friends to test them for us. We would try to test the product for three types of dehydration. The first one being hydration when you are sweating, the second one when you have not had water for long and are actually dehydrated and lastly when you are perfectly hydrated. Our team cannot wait to test out the product as we are very excited about making it possible for each part to work. Furthermore, we got and gave helpful feedback on our existing prototype and our plan of action for the final product. We got some useful feedback for our product. One of the groups told us that instead of making the LEDs blink throughout it should blink 2-3 times as it would be very annoying to have it blinking while we are in class or in some meeting. Adding to that, we thought of making the LED blink 3-4 times and after that have a constant light. This is because there are chances that people might miss those three blinks.

We even critiqued other teams’ prototypes. One of the teams that we gave feedback to was making a security system that would send a notification to your mobile phone if someone entered your house. You can have this on your main door. It works with a motion sensor. The idea is whenever it detects motion it will send a text message. I enjoyed giving feedback to other teams prototypes as it was nice to hear other ideas that teams had.

According to me, the feedbacks allowed the groups to get a different perspective on their products. It also gave a sense of how the users would want to change the product and what would benefit them more. We will definitely incorporate the feedbacks we received and hope to make the product that can be used by everyone.

FabLab is an exciting place to be at and it gets your creative juices flowing. This week as well we had our class at the FabLab. Last week we wired breadboards and used code to get our Arduinos working by uploading the code onto it. This week again our group was to learn a new way of working with Arduinos, that is the use of soldering technique. We joined the wires together by melting lead. The coding process is not a permanent way to join wires, however soldering is a permanent joint. It was much more challenging as there are many things that you need to keep in mind while soldering. This is a useful link that I found which tells you the do’s and don’t of the soldering process briefly.

“Soldering is a process in which two or more metal items are joined together by melting and then flowing a filler metal into the joint—the filler metal having a relatively low melting point. Soldering is used to form a permanent connection between electronic components.”

It took us the entire class time, which is 2 hours 40 minutes, to solder all the wires together. You can imagine now how tedious the soldering process is. The end result was the same as last week, the LED lights would light up according to the amount of brightness around it. The darker the light, the faster the LED lights would blink and the brighter the light the slower the LED blinks. It was just a different way of approaching it.

We have now acquired different skills to work with the Arduino and have become familiar with the entire process. This would be very helpful in our projects that we need to turn in at the end of this semester. Here is another link that I found interesting if someone wants to know more about the process of soldering and how it is done.

It was time for us to get some hands-on experience with building and making other interesting things. For this, we had the opportunity to go to the Champaign Urbana Community Fab Lab which is located near the South Quad in the building called Art Annex 2. This day was very different from the other days as today was when we started with the making process. The Fab Lab was a space with vastly modified products, for instance, a printer that could paint with water colors, electronic cutters, and fabric machines.

We were then split into three groups and hence were working on two different projects. My group was working on the electronics side of the project. Duncan and Andrea helped us in learning the working of LED lights on an Arduino board. An Arduino board is used to create sensors. “Arduino board designs use a variety of microprocessors and controllers. The boards are equipped with sets of digital and analog input/output (I/O) pins that may be interfaced to various expansion boards (shields) and other circuits. The boards feature serial communications interfaces, including Universal Serial Bus (USB) on some models, which are also used for loading programs from personal computers.” It was not that tough to use the Arduinos and therefore one can learn at home very easily. You can learn more about this on a website called ‘Instructables’. This is a website that tells you the step by step process of making an Arduino board yourself at home. There is a list of things that you would need to purchase to make this board which is also listed on the website.

As per our group, we are thinking of adding an electronic component in our product and that too a band that lights up due to certain reasons, so this was very helpful. The main purpose of the project that we were working on today was to make the LED lights blink based on the intensity of the light. The darker the light, the faster the LED lights would blink and the brighter the light the slower the LED blinks. There was a kind of a light sensor to which the board responded. By the end of the day, I could not believe that I actually made a circuit board that functions like a light sensor.

WEEK 5

#DeliveringIdeas #HowCanWe #BrainStorm #IDEO

I was greatly inspired by David Kelly, who is the CEO of a Global firm IDEO which incorporates human behavior into product design. In his interview on a show called 60 minutes, he talks empathetic design. Empathetic design is when the designer thinks about the feeling of the client he is making the product for and tries to be in his/her shows. IDEO’s concept of brainstorming ideas collectively and using each others perspective allows the invention of products which would be difficult for a single person. It would be good to keep in mind that having concepts is just the first step towards making your product.

Our class was mostly devoted to thinking of problems that our team would like to solve by coming out with “How can we” statements. The 5 problems that our team came up with were:

• How can we get busy individuals who are working or in college to drink more water?
• How can we create a laptop case which can fit all laptops and keep them from breaking?
• How can we get households around the world to save energy?
• How can we get bikers in college to wear helmets and keep their bikes safe?
• How can we get people in working areas such as college or the workplace to keep their whiteboards clean?

When we look around us we can find so many designs and products that have been made for such specific purposes and solves them perfectly. If we think about it patiently we would know that a lot of thinking has gone into making one product. It is not just a matter of 2-3 days. Another problem that we faced was that most of the time we think of the product forst rather than the proble we face. This was one of the habits that Professor Vishal changed by asking us to think of a problem first rather than a product. As this would help us in coming up with a number of solutions to one problem rather than just one product that solves that problem. It would further help us in re-designing and making the prouct better each time.

After this we had a guest speaker, Mike Bohlmann, who was a big time maker himself and works as the assisstant dean of technology for the college of media. He was very much into making things in his own time. It was more than a passion than a job for him. The kinds of products that he made was quite innovative and interesting. In all, it was a day full of inspirations.

Time to learn how to build! #Learning #CAD #Modeling #Fusion360workshop

Building things can be tough and building it on CAD software, you can imagine. It was time to get on with the whole 3-D designing, not beginners but fully advanced CAD software. Creating models on CAD is totally different from designs made on paper. There are so many things that you can do with your model. There are no limits, especially with the software that we were taught today by a highly qualified person from AutoDesk.

Before coming for the class we watched a video about how to make a part in Fusion360. This helped us all to get a hang of the software and know the basics of it. Jeffrey Smith from AutoDesk came today to give us a workshop and teach us how to use Fusion360. When he came he introduced himself to us and told us about his journey and how he ended up working at AutoDesk. His story was so inspiring, it made me realize that one should always keep trying and never give up. He then talked about the company and told us that it is located in Pier 9. After this, it was time for us to gets our hands on the software and do some building.

Learning CAD software is a meticulous job and even a tiny mistake can make the entire design go to waste. Jeff started teaching us the basics of the software. He first told us how to create a new file and where can we save files. Then he talked about the sketch tool. He first drew something with the sketch tool and then asked us to try it on our own once he was finished demonstrating it. This way we got time to examine and play with each tool. After the sketch tool, we learned how to extrude things and scale it to the size that we want it to be. This was the time when our model actually looked 3-D. There are so many ways by which you can make a model; there is no particular step. After learning to extrude we were allowed to use the purple button that is the ‘create form’ option. This tool looked so organic with all the rounded edges. My favorite tool was the assembly tool. This tool made your single part interact with other parts and one could see how it would function as a whole. This gave us a sense of step-by-step building process.

To conclude I would like to say that the workshop made me more inclined towards using this software and play with different tools. I am really looking forward to the assignment in which we have to create a product on Fusion360 that has different/separate parts to it and make then interact with each other.

#DesignForAmerica #DesignProcess #MakersForLife

Human-centered design is a new up and coming scene in which designers put into the account of the target user and design around that basis. In order to successfully produce a new product, one has to be able to identify the problem and the user to identify the situation at hand and then solve it utilizing creative problem-solving techniques. Limitless. This word accurately depicts the nature of our class session this week, where we participated in a lab led by the UIUC chapter of Design for America. Through a series of exercises, we were exposed to the processes and mindset behind ideation from a designer’s perspective.

In order to give us a look at their design process and put us in a Design For America mindset, they facilitated a class activity in which we were handed 3 cards at random. One card gave the demographic which the product which we were designing for, the next gave what it will be used for, and the last card a constraint for out design. One of the group’s challenge was to design a way to make music for adventurous preschoolers and the constraint was that it should grow. They interpreted the constraint, “it grows”, as that the object expands. Their team came up with an expandable “laptop”, where it had 3 folds, one had a screen, the middle had buttons in different colors and shapes, and the last fold had a piano keyboard and a xylophone. The buttons would make noises when pressed and the screen can show cute characters dancing on the screen. The piano and xylophone allow the child to have a physical thing they can play with to make noise in case they do not like digital sounds.

As written on the website of Chicago Architecture Foundation, “The Design Process is an approach for breaking down a large project into manageable chunks.”

Although our workshop with Design for America had us create unrealistic products, the same concepts hold true. Before you can come up with a design, you need to have a specific population and a specific problem to solve in mind.  As you design the product, it needs to be realistic and be able to be manufactured, and it needs to be profitable.  Fortunately for us, our access to the Maker Lab and CU Fab Lab allows to rapidly design, create, and test prototypes.  Regardless, It is important for us keep desirability, viability, and feasibility in mind throughout the entire process.

Now, it was time to make the logos for the groups. Just seeing the logos printing made all of us so excited for what the future holds for us. What can we all create from nothing? There are still so many questions we need to ask ourselves before coming up with our final ideas and designs. I look forward to figuring out what the final products will be through design thinking.

If you want to know a more in-depth experience of each individual you go to the ‘Week 3’ tab.

WEEK 3 REFLECTION

 #Week3 #DesignProcess #LogoPrinting #HowCanWe

As written on the website of Chicago Architecture Foundation, “The Design Process is an approach for breaking down a large project into manageable chunks.”[1] Today was all about the design process. The ways in which one should go about in making a product. Coming from a major that is all about design, it was a good revision. For this, a club called Design For America had come to class to make us all experience and explain the distinct steps of a design process.

What’s so great about the design process? ‘We keep saying that there is no set start point for your own products design process, but the concepts and focuses of each phase are essential in helping you to build bigger, long-lasting products for the world to enjoy. Without a clear concise plan, you are only setting yourself up for a long road of setbacks and delayed products.’[2]

We were given three different cards, which had three different words on it. Each card had a different meaning depending on the color at the back of the card, namely, for whom the product was, what is the purpose of the product and a constraint. Our team had to make a product for preschoolers through which they could play music and the product should grow. This step is called defining a problem. Each team got a different problem. At first we were all puzzled on how to make a product grow but eventually, we were able to figure it out. We took a different meaning for ‘grow’ and that was the product could be expandable. Next, we were supposed to think of different ideas for the product, this process is called ideation. We had to share our ideas with the other team members.

After this, to actually delve into the whole process of design all of us were given one problem. The main focus of this product was senior citizens. We had to think of the problems that senior citizens come across and make a product that could solve one or more of these problems. In this activity, we went from ideation to actually making a low-fidelity prototype for our product. We even made a “How can we” statement. Our team’s ‘How can we’ statement was: ‘How can we get senior citizens in retirement homes to feel needed/autonomous/respected?’

This was not it! After this informed lesson we got on to making a design for our team logos and names. The name of my team is ‘Ex-nihilo’, which is a Latin word meaning ‘out of nothing’. For the logo design, we were introduced to the software called Tinker CAD which is basically a CAD software for beginners. It was fun using the software.

Printed logo Image https://www.flickr.com/photos/151781568@N06/31977109693/in/datetaken/

To conclude, it was a day full of learning, from getting to know the design process to actually designing a logo using a CAD software.

[1] “DiscoverDesign Handbook.” DiscoverDesign. Chicago Architecture Foundation, 2016. Web. 08 Feb. 2017.

[2] “ZURB.” ZURB – Product Design, Interaction Design & Design Strategy. N.p., 2017. Web. 08 Feb. 2017.