A course project that was aimed for maximized ideation and concept iteration, also for an expressive way of storytelling.
September 2022
Project 1 of ID2023 was very inspiring for me because it helped me form an appropriate sense of expanding ideation and making rapid prototypes.
I‘ve done a lot of brainstorming myself or with my teammates in the past, but Project 1 is my first time generating 50 ideas within a single project. The theme “Time measuring piece” is especially open to any possibility so that I could bring up wild ideas to my sketches. I still remember the frustrating moment I sat in front of my desk during that ideation weekend and the sense of achievement when I found I had reached the goal. The downside of this part will be the limited time. In this project, I don’t think I could discuss it with the instructors and my classmates sufficiently to gather enough feedback. Also, because of the number of ideas, critiques went a bit boring, and less valuable feedback was collected from my point of view. Inventing concepts with no limits from the practical evaluation is a brand-new experience for me, and I found it helpful to iterate some “seemingly” impossible ideas.
Another exciting part of this project was the process of making rapid prototypes. Because they were “rapid models,” I used whatever material I could put my hands on to demonstrate the shape and possible functions. The materials I salvaged include: some cardboard, wood blocks, an instant noodle cup, one part of a model I made last year, and a pair of new-old-stock socks.
However, the limited duration forced me to make models with varied fidelities, and I believe the models can iterate better if more time is given. I‘m sad that no functioning models were made due to my lack of electronic knowledge, so I hope I could have a similar project in the upper-class period and involve in collaborations with engineers.
