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Coraline the Coral--Discursive Design

 Our last project in Design Studio invited us to explore discursive design, speculative design and design futures.  

Having grown up in the cloud forest of Costa Rica, I have been exposed to the ethic and work of conservation from a young age.  As a Quaker, the pillar of Stewardship has always spoken to me.  

As such, the issue I decided to explore by way of this project was conservation and the destruction of the natural world that has come with development and ‘advancement’.  

Below I will outline the problem and the potential solution I explored:

The Problem: 

Coral is being destroyed. About 1/5th of the world’s coral reefs have already been lost or severely damaged.  Another 35% could be lost within 10-40 years.  Coral reefs have survived tens of thousands of years of natural change but many of them may not be able to survive the havoc brought by human kind.  This is a problem because coral provides many services to the ecosystems it inhabits and is crucial for the health of the planet’s oceans. 

Why is coral being destroyed? There are many reasons such as the use of fertilizers and certain chemicals that run off into the ocean, rising water temperatures as a result of global warming and careless tourism. But I wanted to design to a more fundamental issue: empathy.  As designers we often talk about the empathy that is required for us to understand the user, but I wanted to flip this and design a product to engender empathy in the user.  

In my mind, one of the most important factors contributing to the degradation of the natural world, and especially coral, is our lack of empathy for other living things.  Simply put, people don’t view coral as a living creature.  Empathy with the planet and the beings that inhabit it are a big barrier to conservation and appropriate preservation of the natural world.

The Solution: 

Broadly, people need to relate more to coral.  How to achieve this? Having done the projects with kids at the beginning of class, I was already in the frame of mind of working with kids and designing for them.  My solution was to create a plush toy that resembles a caricature of a coral that can say prerecorded messages.  By allowing children to engage with coral at a formative stage in a way that makes it more familiar and perceived as biotic, my hope is that children will be more amenable to changing behaviors later on in life that will help prevent coral destruction and other environmental degradation. Additionally, it is possible that parents would change behaviors in response to this product and the information I envision accompanying it in the branding and packaging.

The Process:

I began by cutting out a cardboard outline of the coral and using that as a template for making the plush toy.  

Using this template, I cut out two identical pieces of coral pink felt.  I then sewed these pieces together and flipped the whole thing inside out so that the seams would be inside the toy.  

In my second iteration, I decided to add a zipper to ease the insertion of the arduino, speaker and battery pack.  This zipper was added by cutting a slit in the felt and sewing the zipper on from the inside.  This was definitely the most technically difficult part of the sewing process.

After completing the shell for the animal, I had to deal with the most challenging part of the project: setting up the arduino such that it would respond to input from two force sensors by playing pre-recorded .wav files from a micro SD card.  I spent a lot of time in the Human Centered Robotics Initiative in the Sci Li and luckily got some help from one of the work-study students there.  

The first step was to connect the waveshield I ordered from adafruit to the arduino--the easy part.  Then I soldered the speaker wires and the force sensor wires into their appropriate ports.  This was my first time soldering, so it was a bunch of fun!  Once all the hardware seemed to be working, I had to begin coding.  This part was tough and I faced a couple of road blocks, but eventually got it working.

Here’s a sample screenshot of the code:

I then created a storage box for the Arduino component and housed it within the coral skin I had made.  After putting the Arduino, speaker and battery components within the skin, I stuffed the whole thing with pillow stuffing material bought from Lorraine’s.

After the product itself was up and running, the next step was to create a video to demonstrate its use.  The video is below:

I first made a gif using Adobe Illustrator.  Using a tablet, I drew each letter and took a screen shot, then made an animation using Illustrator and exported it as a .gif.  This is the intro to the film.  

With the help of my friend Lou, I demonstrated a potential scene in which Lou is in bed with Coraline and it is clear that he is attached to his friend.  

In the video, you can see some of the things Coraline says: “I help keep the ocean clean and safe!”, “Save me!” and “I am the home for many species of fish.” Coraline also says, “A healthy coral means a healthy ocean which means a healthy planet” and “I’m a sensitive creature!”.  

Here are individual videos of the different things Coraline says:

Some of the inspiration for Coraline the Coral came from a project called Jerry the Bear. https://www.jerrythebear.com/

Jerry the Bear is a bear with diabetes.  By taking care of Jerry's diabetes, children gain hands-on practice with counting carbs, monitoring Jerry's blood sugar, and dosing Jerry with insulin. It is an example of using stuffed animals to do more than just be cute!

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Cement Surfing

Over the past week I have been working on making myself a longboard.  For the last year and a half, my penny board has been my primary mode of transportation around campus, and has been a source of joy--Tyler and like to go out and cruise around the East Side in our owl onesies with the wind in our hair and the buttery smooth pavement flying by beneath us.

I decided it was time to step it up.  I wanted to make a longboard that makes it feel like I’m surfing.  Looking online I found the Gullwing II Sidewinder Trucks, which are longboard trucks with two turning pins instead of one.  This allows the rider to turn super sharply, to pump and to surf the streets.  

With the trucks ordered, I got to work making the deck. I started by drawing out the shape of the deck on a piece of 1/4″ Baltic Birch plywood. 

Then I took my second piece of 1/4″ plywood and glued it together with the first making sure the grains were going different directions to increase the strength of the deck.  After applying the glue, I raised the deck by placing 2x4s underneath the either end.  From there, I placed weights in the center of the board so it would drive with a slight curvature.  This is a relatively low tech solution--I could have steam pressed the board--but for a simple upward bend, it was all I needed.  

The picture above shows the two sheets clamped together, the weights on top, and the slight downward bend.  

After waiting 48 hours, I removed the weights and the clamps and proceeded to cut out the shape on the band saw.

After the shape was cut out (which proved rather difficult given the curvature), I used an orbital sander to give the edges of the deck some roundness.  

After sanding, I applied a Chestnut wood stain.

Once the wood was well-colored, I moved on to the paint job.  I went to the RISD 3D store to buy the spray-paint colors I wanted (light blue and white) and a spray on semi-gloss lacquer.  

To make the line design I was aiming for I used painters tape to assure that the parts of the board I didn’t want colored stayed protected.

The paint job looked like this:

After the paint job was complete, I moved on to adding the hardware.  I measured out the midpoint of the board and made markings to assure the trucks were parallel and evenly spaced.  

The “first final” looked like this:

While I really like the shape of this deck, it had a functional issue. Because the Gullwing Sidewinders have so much turn in them, when turning sharply the wheels bit into the deck and stopped the board abruptly--not a good thing when you are flying down the street.  

The solution was simple. I just cut out pockets from the deck so that there would be no bite from the wheels.  The final product looks like this:

Design and make things that bring you joy--when you have time!

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“Designers, perhaps not unlike poets and rabbis, have the ability to make us aware of the meaning that is given to the things we do and the objects all around us.” -- http://thewisdomdaily.com/mezuzah-doorbell-design-ritual/

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Today the Brown Daily Herald published an article about the advising course I designed for second-semester freshmen to redefine conceptions of success and integrate values into decision making at college.  

My interest in education and my interest in design have led me to explore curriculum design.  After reading Designing your Life, a book based on a course taught at Stanford that applies design thinking to life, and an article about Harvard’s Living Wisely program, I was inspired to fill the same gap in advising at Brown.  

In freshman year, and throughout college really, advising is situated within a framework that focuses on the practical (plans to complete all requirements) and tends to lack emphasis on connecting educational decisions with values.  It also often fails to provide students with skills and tools that could be helpful in approaching their education with intentionality--drawing connections between what they do and what they believe and want to see in the world.  

My freshman year I was feeling lost--I was being bombarded with information about concentrations, programs and classes, but I was having trouble tangibly connecting these things to what I believe in.  I was looking for a sense of purpose in my decisions, and for me purpose is derived from my values. Seeking to help myself and others in my position, I spoke to the Dean of the College and before I knew it was designing a three part course for 60 freshmen. 

The course is tripartite.  The first section focuses on looking back at the previous semester, identifying core values and doing what I like to call value evaluations.  A value evaluation is a process by which one checks daily/weekly activities and thought-space against what one cares about.  By drawing connections between what we do and think day-to-day and what we believe we believe in, we are more able to see disparities between the two, and places we are succeeding, and bring our actions more in line with our values. Here is a link to the slides for the first session.

The second session begins to look at more concrete questions concerning concentrations, but specifically aims to situate this question within the context of one’s definition/vision of success, values and ideals.  Here we try dive deeper than what is traditionally offered in concentration-related advising by connecting this decision to life experience and identity.  Additionally, having this discussion in a group setting surrounded by peers allows students to share their concerns, questions and reflections with each other, an option that is not abundant in one-on-one adviser meetings.  This session also seeks to situate these decisions within the context of the open curriculum and to provide students with a historical and deeper understanding of this innovative and impactful educational system.  Here we seek to elucidate and draw out the implicit and explicit values present in the Open Curriculum so that they can be discussed and debated openly.  Here is a link to the slides from the second session.

The third and final session is a look to the future.  We first revisit the connections between our values and our studies and more explicitly tie this to notions of success.  We then envision daily habits to enact / articulate action steps that align with living a life of meaning, purpose and well-being (right now). In this session we seek to provide students with concrete tools to use when moving forward in their college experience.  Here is a link to the slides from the third session. 

As mentioned in the article, this semester’s course is the first iteration.  We are collecting as much feedback as possible from participants and facilitators (users) and will be meeting in the coming weeks to incorporate feedback into the design of the program and develop the second iteration of the program.  According to Dean Mandel, the college would like to scale Pathway’s up to serve 400 freshmen.  This is all very exciting!

As more of a personal reflection, and not directly connected to the course, but arising from the process of creating it, I have been thinking about the following:

I seem to envision two me’s in my head.  The person I am and the person I hope to be (the perfect vision of myself, what I strive for and what I wish I was). I have been working hard recently to bring these two closer to each other, so that eventually they can be one.  From a design perspective, I think it would be interesting to design to the question, how can we help ourselves and others eliminate the gap between who we are and who we wish to be?  Perhaps it is too big a question, but it might engender some interesting ideas.  We’ll see where I take this.

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Farm Pets: Speculative Design for Agricultural Education

After completing our “unit” on play and game design, we transitioned away from Human Centered Design and began to discuss discursive, speculative and critical design as new design methodologies to add to our tool belts.  

I am particularly excited and fond of the idea of these methodologies, because I think they more purposefully situate the designer as an actor with a responsibility to critique the world around him/her. 

For this project, I worked with Rosanna and Emily to explore a topic we are all interested in: the future of food.

Our group dynamics led to a lot of ideation and discussion and verbal exploration of many very cool ideas, but this often left us confused and with an amorphous idea of where we wanted to go.  

Our first idea was simply to create a hanging planter that, using sensors, would allow users to have a more data driven experience of growing food.  This, however, was lacking, I believe, because it didn’t have a particular user or context in mind.  

Frustrated with this seeming lack of direction, I proposed that we orient the project towards education and make youngsters our target audience.  I had been brainstorming a system by which kids would individually take responsibility for their own plant, but would also be able to take communal responsibility for the health of a farm that would take the form of a dock for each child’s plant in the classroom and would provide aggregate metrics across all individual pods.  

Settling in on this idea, we got started prototyping using cardboard and a glue gun. 

The process of gluing the pods was frustrating and not as aesthetically pleasing as we would have liked--in subsequent iterations we could try using acrylic and scoring it then bending perhaps.

We 3D printed a carrot to incorporate into the project to satisfy one of the requirements that Professor Gonsher had mentioned for the project.  

The first iteration is below.  

While the project has some redeeming qualities, I was not very satisfied with the first iteration.  The resolution was quite low and it wasn’t future-oriented enough for me or critical enough.  What frustrated me I think was the fact that planters such as this one already exist.  The only thing differentiating ours was the the shape of the mobile technology on which the control app was installed (so nothing too significant).  I did really like our process of refining the idea where we developed a clear context and user--this really allowed us to narrow down the use-case scenario and progress towards something better than where we started.

The critiques from class were:

1) Modify the video and remove the mind mapping as it could have been explained more concisely.

2) Further present the use-case scenario in the video.  Make sure to really exhibit how the product is used.  This seems to be a key part of speculative design.  Scenario rather than explanation. 

3) Change the color of the pods.  Make it more kid-friendly, not IKEA-y.  

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Learning to use Arduinos

Last week we did a class on Arduinos.  As far as I understand, Arduinos are little computers with a host of useful attachments that can be controlled through an easy to use programming interface on one’s computer.  

As this was an introductory class, we practiced making LEDs turn on and off, and making motors spin in a controlled fashion.  

This tool opens up a whole new world of opportunities.  They are small and easily integrated into many prototypes and add a whole bunch of cool capabilities to a project.  I am excited to use them in the conservation oriented critical design project I am currently working on (to be revealed at a later date. 

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Oceano, crepúsculo, tamales, anochecer.

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Winter 2016.  

*Click on the image for better quality.

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Exploring gradients and farm lemons.  Lemon, cut in two. Adobe Lightroom for edits. Illustrator for gradients.

*Click on the image for better quality.

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Demonstration of a moving SPLOOSH! 

* See previous post for context!

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Iterating on Games

After our first round of play at JCDS, we came back to the BDW to work on a second iteration of our games.  

I started by trying to improve upon the memory game that Nathan and I had developed at JCDS.  

First I laser cut some pieces so that they would be more exact and uniform and colored the edges with sharpies to give them more vibrance and to allow for distinction between pieces of the same shape.

My plan was to then make cards with possible things to make using the shapes, but when I learned that the 1st graders at JCDS would also be iterating on our games, I decided to pivot and design a different game. 

* I decided not to follow through with my Memory Palace idea because of space constraints in the classroom, and because I think it might be a better exercise to play with kids who are slightly older.  Based on my first experience with the 1st graders, rules were secondary to imagination (which is awesome!), but for the memory palace to be more than a play house, some rules are necessary and some understanding of the somewhat complicated idea behind it.

In the end, I decided to follow up on a piece of intuition that I picked up on while washing dishes.  As I washed the surface of an incredibly oily pan that we had used for frying plantains, I realized that the water I placed in the pan clumped together and rolled around in little balls.  It was fun, and I played with it for a good minute.

Based on this intuition, I began to design a game that would utilize a hydrophobic surface and colored water that could be blown around using straws.  This was my first drawing:

Once in the BDW, I used a piece of acrylic for my game board and collected straws, food coloring and white board markers.  I named the game SPLOOSH!

As you can see, each player gets to name his/her Sploosh!

The first step is to add the food coloring to the water, then place a small amount of water on the board.

Then the SPLOOSH! can be blown around using one of the straws.  This objects can then be used to play various games.  I suggested races, mazes and battles, but the kids at JCDS used the board for making art, trying to blow water into shapes and by generally making a fun mess!

Above are the directions to begin.

These are the directions for the games I suggested.

Once I actually got to test the game on the 1st graders, most of the rules went out the window--which was to be expected.  They began to blow the water around like crazy, mix colors, draw, drop water from heights and watch the dispersion on impact, etc.  During critique I got the following feedback:

1) It should have edges so the water doesn’t get everywhere.

I agree that it would be good to have a mechanism that prevented colored water from spreading across a classroom, but I don’t think edges are a good idea.  As it is, there is some difficulty in getting low enough to blow the SPLOOSHES around.  I think large container in which an elevated board could be placed might work better.  When water was blown off the sides, it would simply fall down into the container to be disposed of later.  

2) There should be holders for the color beakers so that they don’t spill.

This is a fantastic idea!  Definitely a must do for the next iteration!

Conclusion and Reflection

It was a ton of fun to engage with the JCDS 1st graders to prototype and iterate on some games.  Playing with them was a great exercise in divergent thinking and trying to get away from the functional fixedness that is engrained in us as we get older.  I will be trying to channel the play that these kids are so good at as I move forward as a designer.

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Kids want something that will allow them to make a new world out of their own world every time they use it.

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Play Time at JCDS RI

Today our class went to visit the JCDS primary school on the East Side.  The objective was to play alongside the 1st graders in order to gain insight into how they play, build prototypes and learn from the experts. I spent the morning with Nathan and we had a great time playing and creating together!

General Reflections:

- Rules were out the window.  Everything seemed to be improvisation and built on itself as we went along--the rules were made up as we progressed.  

- At what age does functional fixedness arise?  We started the morning with some questions like: “What do you do with a chair?”  Many of the kids responded, “sit on it”, but others came up with much more unconventional responses.  At what age do we begin to lose this creativity?  Does our education facilitate this loss? Is there any way to counteract this?

- Playing is a very broad and amorphous act--it’s our job to find new and unique ways of getting at some of the basic/biological reactions that make play fun!

- Tactile games or games that involve creation seem to attract the attention of this age group.  

Blokus--Nathan and I explore

When asked to choose a game Nathan pulled out Blokus.  We started by trying to box each other in with pieces.  Then we transition to drawing pictures with tiles and finally we ended up drawing pictures with the tiles, having the other person memorize the setup and then trying to recreate it.  The game we created is outlined here:

Below is Nathan starting to reconstruct Dude the Duck from a drawing he made:

Here is a picture of the initial prototype including the shapes and cards we made using paper, cardboard and crayons:

We didn’t finalize the rules, but broadly speaking the name of the game is to create an image (preferably with a name and a backstory) either out of one’s own imagination or based on a card, let the other player try to memorize it, then test their memory by shuffling the pieces around and letting the second player try to reconstruct the original image.  

This game brought my attention back to one of the sketches I had made the night before for the day’s assignment, which was to sketch 3 design ideas for games/toys.  I’m fascinated by the potential intersection of play and memory. To my knowledge, there are many games that rely on the use of memory, such as the game Memory itself.  But most of these games rely on brute force techniques of memory. I recently read a book called Moonwalking with Einstein that described the competitive memory circuit and the mnemonic techniques used by these mental athletes, including the Memory Palace technique. This book has inspired me to utilize some of these techniques in my every day life and, in the context of this assignment, to theorize that it might  be possible to teach some of these mnemonic techniques through play. When brainstorming games I came up with the following idea:

The Memory Palace--Bringing Memory Techniques into a Physical Space of Play 

The memory palace, also known as the method of locci, is a mnemonic technique that allows us to engage our spatial memory in order to better remember anything, really. A memory palace is a spatial memory of a physical space that one is familiar with, for example one’s home or school.  One then places imagined images of what one wants to remember throughout the palace. For this game I envision making the mental memory palace into a physical space in which kids can play, with plenty of locci to place objects throughout.

My hypothesis is that kids will enjoy the process of playing in the house, with an objective of memorizing the order the objects and competing with their playmates.  

I imagine creating various objects that come along with the play house that are brightly colored and diverse that can be placed in the locci.  Here’s a picture of objects from class today that could be used as inspiration:

Kids can then go through the house exploring and playing with the objects and memorizing their order.  At the end, there will be a deck of cards and they will have to organize them in order that they appeared in the house.

Once this usage has been practiced, I imagine the kids creating lists of objects to memorize for each other and then, without physical objects this time, the kids can go through and use the memory palace technique to memorize their list. 

Other homework ideas:

1) Protect the Smush

The inspiration for this game came from two sources: 1) children love stuffed animals, 2) children love to build.  Protect the Smush is a game in which players use a given set of construction pieces to create a shelter for their Smush (stuffed animal, but a better name).  Professor Gonsher denominated this sort of game as a generative construction game.  It will allow kids to exercise their creative minds, tactile senses and gain insight into physics and construction problems.

2) Gamefied Farming

The motivation for this game came out of my desire to create a non-zero sum game.  I wanted to really engage the nurturing and loving part of humanity that children have a unique knack at displaying.  The hope is that this game allows children to engage with the earth and the growth process of a plant.  Using new trends and technologies in food production, the plant capsule would be outfitted with sensors that track and monitor important parameters.  These parameters would then be accessible via an app in which the kids could track growth, get stars for keeping parameters at optimum levels and share with friends.

Conceptual Background for Homework Assignment:

Design Lab for Primary students:

One of the most striking things about our visit today was our tour of the primary school’s Design Lab.  It was incredible to see that the school was engaging these youngsters in the design process and teaching them design thinking.  

The pictures below illustrate two of the problems they are trying to design solutions for:

I was inspired to see if I could arrange a way to volunteer at the school in the Design Lab in order to teach and learn from these kids about design.  We’ll see where that goes!

To Follow Up On:

Prototyping kit for kids--When Professor Gonsher asked the kids to define prototyping they gave detailed and accurate descriptions.  This made me think that it might be possible to make a game/kit with a range of prototyping materials and guides for youngsters.

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Human Centered Design: Prototyping Play

1/30/17--Day 1

We started off the class by playing checkers.  I didn’t know how to play, so I was able to gain insight into the importance of clear instructions (although it didn’t necessarily manifest itself in the prototype I’d make later in class).  

After playing checkers the class was challenged to reinvent and redesign checkers in any way we pleased.  The final product would be a low resolution prototype.  

My partner and I started with some divergent ideation and came up with the following mock-ups:

1) Curling Chess

2) Finger Footy

3) Bocci a la Checkers

I must admit that our initial ideation process was rather constrained.  Initially, most of our ideas found inspiration in already existing sports.  However, the seeds for some conceptual foundations did come to mind.  As we spoke about the importance of empathy in design I began thinking about ways of engendering empathy in children, particularly surrounding the refugee experience.  The empathy of the community a refugee enters is crucial. The people who have opened up their community do not necessarily think deeply about the lived experience of the people who they are taking in.  I can imagine two versions of a game that hopes to solve this problem--one that is age appropriate for children and one that is more appropriate for adults.  Important to not essentialise the experience, but also find some archetypal and generalizable experiences/activities that build empathy for the experience of refugees.  This is just a seed or a framework for a potential project to think about later on... Another interesting issue/framework would be the Tragedy of the Commons.

In the end, my partner and I decided to prototype 2) Finger Footy.  

For our low-resolution prototype we used cardboard, glue, sharpies and checkers chips.

This is our final product:

Some considerations we deemed important were the walls to prevent chips from flying all over the class room and clear lines for shooting and defense. We also determined that the side walls should taper down so as not to get in the way of the player.  

We also decided to make the difficulty adjustable by allowing the players to change the size of the goal (above).

After our game was played we got the following feedback:

- The game was not as straightforward as we believed.  The two players believed that they were trying to knock over the black chips and that they were both shooting at the same time.  We had envisioned one player setting up the defense and the other shooting.  Once this was explained, the players enjoyed the game.

- The arrows pictured above were confusing.  We were initially going to label the lines and give instructions, but we decided to see if they game was intuitive enough not to require instructions (clearly it was not!).  The arrows, however, caused more confusion because they indicated an affordance that was not there.

Next steps would be to write out clearer instructions or try some sort of different layout that indicates how the gang should be played.