Laura Rosensteel

Rapid Prototype Portfolio Spring 2001

 

For Rapid Design, your portfolio can document what you have learned in the following areas

To get started, you can keep your assignments in a notebook or a cardboard box. However, the assignments show what you did, not what you learned. I would like you to think about how you can document what you learned. One way is to write an essay. Another way is to show the evolution of your ideas. You might want to document how your ideas for your final project evolved, what you learned from building the prototypes, what you learned from your classmates, etc.

 

Week 1

  1. Tue. Design Games

This was an odd day. What exactly is this class about? We played ice breakers, such as:

·         Name Ball

·         Name Ball 2

·         Sound Ball

·         Word Ball

·         Body Mirror

·         Bean Bag Toss

·         Bean Bag Chain

·         What Are You Doing?

·         Yes Let's

·         Red Rover

·         Object Telephone

·         Be There

·         What is it?

I think I inadvertently hit a few people in the head with beanbags. Whoops.

2.  Thurs . Toy Dissection

This was interesting, because children’s toys are actually simple mechanical devices. I never thought to try to figure out what was inside there. I was in a group with a mechanical engineer, and realized that he was much more competent than I in the area of figuring out gears (ie he knew the names of gears, and could identify possible types of gears based on the type of motion (ie speed of the rotations)). It was intereseting though. We had pinned our helicopter launcher as a wind up bobbin type energy storing device, but when we opened it up, it was actually a rubberband being twisted up to store energy.

 

Week 2

  1. Tue. Lab 1: Making Web Pages

I went home for this lab because I am a CS major..

 

  1. Thurs. Project 1 Presentations


 

Child Fan Toy

 

Child Frog Toy

 

Child Syringe Toy

 

I based most of these ideas on modifications of what I’ve seen. The syringe toy was a modification of the bead  maze games at the doctor’s offices. It was interesting to see what other people came up with, because I was pretty stumped. I came up with the fan toy because one of the kids down the hall has a huge fan, and they floated a beach ball over it.

 

As for my presentation ability, of which I believe I have very little, I was mediocre. I planned what I was going to say, but I usually think people are getting bored, so I talk faster, or leave out details that they really should know. From now on, I’m going to talk slower, even if I put them to sleep.

 

Week 3

  1. Tue. Group Dynamics/MBTI Evaluation

This was surprising, because I couldn’t say when I looked at the back of the packet what my personality type was. I was actually a judging outgoing person, which is not what I would have guessed. But the more we worked in groups, I realized that I actually do judge a lot. Also I have a tendancy to lead too; I get annoyed if things don’t get going..

  1. Thurs Design and build activity - Part 1
  2.  

 

This is where we tested our group working abilities. We were grouped with people of non-similar personality types  (from the previous class). It became clearly apparent to me now that I was infact more leading. I could also see the shortcomings of the other group members, not of their design concepts, but, for example, that we were considering a second design. We had already spent time on the first design, so we really needed to concentrate our work on one design. This ended up being our shortcoming. (This will follow in the post-mortem).

Week 4

  1. Tue. Design and build activity - Part 2

This was interesting because we had to put together someone else’s design for the newspaper structure. The one we built was way too big, and the rigity of the newspapers were underestimated.

 

 

This ended up being one of our own design shortcomings. Ours was designed with

triangularly shaped rolls of newspaper, that ended up folding in and just collapsing when the weight of the whole structure was on them. It was very heart breaking to see all of our hard work in pieces on the floor..

 

 

But we didn’t feel so bad; none of the structures in our class stood, just those overachieving sophmores’ structures..

 

 

 

 

 

I think a lot of it had to do with the complication of the structures in our class. If you rolled the newspapers tight enough, then the structure was a lot stronger. Since our build, as well as our own design, were very complicated, we as builders got tired and I think that craftsmanship was compromised.

 

  1. Thurs. How to have a meeting

This was as helpful as the MBTI Evaluation. It was good because it broke down what is important to have a good meeting. These were things that you already knew, but it was good to spell it out plainly, and to assign tasks to each person in the group. We then designed stupid consumer products (ours was pets that hate you, robotic dogs that runs away from you and then explode). We all had roles, and it was helpful to move the meeting along. I was the group leader, the facilitator, and my duties were:

This worked well with the other roles (time keeper, scribe), but I found myself having to fill in the shoes of the time keeper. For some reason, I’m beginning to see management in my career future.. 

 

Week 5

  1. Tue. Role Mole Presentations

I had no idea what to do.Computer Science has really stripped me of nearly all of my creativity. Lauren is equally as non-artsy as me, and she came up with a better idea (storing the glasses in the mole’s bowtie). My mind was really drawing a blank as to a creative solution, so I just focused on other aspects of the project to avoid looking like an ass for the presentation. I based my solution on the fact that mole’s cant see well, so the pink color of my ribbon would help him find his glasses if he doesn’t have them on.

 

           

The presentation wasn’t so bad; I slowed down a little bit, and tried to look at other people than Prof. Finger. I will work on that more next time.

 

  1. Thurs. Project 2, Manufactured Assembly discussion, team formation

I was out of town on an interview for this class. I was put into a group with Angela and Charlene.

 

Week 6

  1. Tue. IronCAD Lab 1

I HATE learning applications in a class. I’d really rather sit down with a book and go at my own pace and ask quesetions if I have a problem. In a large class, where everyone goes at different paces, its difficult to find a pace ethat wont annoy the majority of the class. Some people want to go faster and are bored, while others are frustrated that something three steps ago didn’t work, and now theyre trying to catch up and missing the point of most of the exercise. IronCAD isnt hard to learn though, and there was a good handout, which was handy.

  1. Thurs. Project 2 Discussion - assignment of processes

This was a good meeting; it met one of the vital good meeting crriteria:food. We had girl scout cookies. We assigned manufacturing processes for each part in the project. Teamwork? The class discussion was dominated by one or two people. At one point, the prof asked for commentary from the rest of the class (she’s a good facilitator). My CS answer for the problem was ‘make a bijective graph…’ one group is the processes, one is the parts.. We ended up just chugging through, swapping out processes if necessary.

 

Week 7

  1. Tue. IronCAD Lab 2
  2. Thurs. Project 2: presentations of manufacturing processes

This was done by Charlene, and my part of most of this was the webpage (to be linked soon). We did some research on CNC machining, and set up time to actually make our part.

Week 8

  1. Tue. In class assembly of parts

Here I will summarize our trauma with the CNC machine. Our Iron Cad file was basically a 2-d instead of a 3-d, so we had major issues converting this to the right format. The overachieving sophmores figured out another way to do it (they are mech e’s, while we were just CS and civil engineers). What we did do was start to make the stock, which familiarized us with the milling machine, and all of the idiosyncracies associated with making an evenly measured part. We didn’t procede from there though. We spent about 2-3 hours talking to the miling machine man, and making just the stock. Other groups spent that time, or less on finishing their entire piece. How rewarding.

  1. Thurs. Project 3 assigned; teams formed

I was put in a group with Tomas and Kristin. It’s a good mix, because Tomas is very mechanical, and Kristin is very creative (design major). We were trying to come up with an itial concept, but none of us were aroundn for the trip to the science center, so w e may have a little trouble coming up with ideas. We had the idea of incorporating water and perhaps some kind of guided ‘missile’, as to adhere to the spy theme.

 

Week 9

  1. Tue. Perfect Cardboard Cube
  2. Thurs. Exercise 2 presentations

This was the garfield soda can holder project. Again, being very un-creative, I couldn’t think of anything beyond a basket, because I was fixed on the idea of garfield being at a picnic. So I basically constructed a cardboard basket. Also I’m not very fluff-oriented either (perhaps a downfall of being a CS major); as long as it is functionally correct, then its OK. It was interesting to see other people’s solutions. I just wasn’t thinking of the cardboard holders that you get at drive-thru’s, which is what some people made. Their designs were all more cleanly cut than mine, but all I had was a dull pair of scissors, so that’s ok.

As far as presentation skills, This time I tried not preparing much, and seeing how I do if I just go up and talk; being that I had this prop, I thought that would help it flow more. Surprisingly effective.

 

Week 11

  1.  Egg Drop

Here we had to make a container to drop an egg from the window, under constraints of the amount of materials we could use.

We had a small amount of ‘dollars’ to spend on them, So we learned how real problems of monetary constraints are dealt with. We had to compromise tape for additional packing material, but it ended up being successful in the end. We also cut up the parachute for a better design, and used the remaining plastic from it to help pack the egg in.

  1. Egg Carrier for Green Acres Farm

This project was to protect eggs from falling while delivered, in a cheap and environmentally sound manner. My solution was to simulate an egg carton, with more padding. This also coincided with my garfield project, because I had the all cardboard and no adhesives in mind. Although my design was not successful, I could see revisions that would make it work. It was more environmentally sound than many of the other projects that used styrofoam !? because it used paper shreadding and cardboard.

 

Week 12

  1. Testing of Project 3 Prototypes

At this point, we’d decided to do an animation project on a record player. The prototype was a small cd case that simulated the record player. There was a cut out tape of animation slides that go on the outside of it that  spin around to animate it. This was a pretty successful prototype.

Week 13

  1. Newspaper structure design/build - Take 2

This time we tried to make up for the design failures from the first time around. First of all, I made a big push to decide on one structure and just to get it together, so that we had time to develop and test it enough, because we didn’t last time. We also considered which structures from last time were successful, and used that.

Basically we made a teepee, and tried to decide on the easiest and safest way to roll the papers. We saw that the diagnol roll made for weak spots, so we didn’t do that, and also to make sure tha the rolls were tight, as that was key to a successful structure.

 

Week 14

  1. Continuation of testing Project 3

We had many children coming  on a few different occasions to test our project. We got the idea that they were more interested in the goop (another groups project) than ours, so we had to make ours more appealing for children. While the core of the project was successful in thoery, getting it across to little children needed something else. So we’re going to simplify the animation drawing that they do, and to add candy, and to make a computer demonstration of animation speeds. This should catch their attention more.