Art 60 Project - 300 objects and 40 hours of my life

Step 1) Acquire and prime 300 objects

2) Mix colors and paint

3) Arrange and mount

Light to Dark

Warm to Cool

Desaturated to Saturated

Reflection 2: The Barbecube

Our first design project was to create a product to help four people carry everything they need to hold a barbeque (except the grill and at least half a mile over any type of terrain).

My initial reaction when watching the presentations was that it was incredible how differently such a seemingly-simple problem statement was interpreted by each group. Our solution, the “barbecube” came primarily out of interviewing about 25 people who were about 22-30 years old. We realized that this user group most enjoyed the socializing aspect of barbequing, least enjoyed the clean-up, often had trouble figuring out how to coordinate and remember to bring all necessary barbeque items, and had the least space in their apartments to store a lot of things. We focused primarily on how we could address these four things with our product and allow our user to truly carry everything he/she might need to enjoy a barbeque. I really enjoyed watching the groups who chose a different user group, primarily the one that chose to try to re-create the 50s picnic and the one that created a device for people who don’t generally barbeque. I learned from this process that it is incredibly important to have a clear user in mind and found the presentations of the groups who did so much more successful than those who didn’t. It helped direct the visions of the final products and gave them a story and a sense of direction.

Another important lesson was how important pacing is in these projects. If we had had more time, I think it would have been really wonderful to have gotten to create our cart-table to carry the cubes. One way that I think we could have created more time for ourselves would have been to conduct even more rapid prototypes. For example, we spent at least 4 hours putting together a Velcro latching system between each of the boxes that turned out to be completely unnecessary (and somewhat detrimental) to our overall design. We ultimately ended up removing all the excess Velcro, but a quick prototype of our carrying mechanism would have led us to this conclusion before we had invested the time in attempting it in the first place. I was impressed by how much information could be gathered through rapid-prototyping. In addition, having a suggested timeline was incredibly helpful in making sure that we finished all stages of the process in a timely manner. It makes me think that perhaps I should invest an hour crafting such a timeline for my 203 project in order to ensure that it gets done by the end of the quarter!

Orientation and Week 1 Photos

I am finally getting a few Week 1 photos up. The first couple are from our visit to David Kelley's house (founder of IDEO and the d. school at Stanford). The giant sand whale was one of our first design challenges and an important part of our fun-filled orientation week.

The following pictures are of the places that I will be spending all of my time for the next two years. The first is the Loft, still a work-in-progress, as the inside is still being built from scratch. The next is the lobby of the d. school and finally, one of the many awesome brainstorming spaces in the d. school. Very excited about the next two years :)

Reflection 1: Design-Thinking

My first week at Stanford was filled with this conversation:

me: Hi, my name is Anisha. What's yours?
someone: My name is _______________. What do you study?
me:

*pause*

my thought process: well, what do I say? The more accurate I make my answer, the more confused people become. I could take the simple route of saying "Mechanical Engineering", but the idea of sitting in a room doing problem sets for hours makes me queasy and is completely inaccurate. If I say "Product Design" people still want to know what department I'm in. I respond to that with Mechanical Engineering. Now the other person looks confused as images of slogging over problem sets and of those of designing a prettier red sofa seem to clash. I suppose I could most accurately respond with "Design Thinking", but that often leads to confusion about how I am getting a Masters degree without specialization in any particular topic. I find that people seem uneasy about the idea of specializing in being a generalist.

The design that I have come to Stanford to study draws from a huge variety of skills and fields including (but not limited to) problem solving, shop/building techniques, abstract creativity, leadership, engineering analysis and design, an understanding of technologies and tools that exist, business and entrepreneurship, sustainability and other social issues, aesthetics and formgiving, communication, human factors, and digital and media skills. I will spend the next two years learning as much as I can about all of these areas from my classes, projects, professors, peers, and extra-curricular activities.

I am here to learn a process that I can apply not only to making innovative products that solve problems, but also to use innovation to transform entire systems and organizations. Any problem or question that a company, person, or community regularly faces has the potential to be alleviated by investing the time to design a better solution. This program is about learning effective methods to do so. The more I learn about what design is and its potential applications to a variety of fields, the more excited I get about the doors it can potentially open and the type of work I may find myself doing in the future.

Unfortunately, this first week has left me perplexed about how to concisely explain my area of expertise and the multitude of applications for what I have come to school to study. I can't wait until this crystallizes.