#chen3791

So this is my final reflection and I have to say it has been a pleasure to take this class as my beginning to design. During this class I learned a lot about the design process. The group work we did were really good and I feel like been a part of the group to accomplish the work. Also the presentations this week are interesting. There is one group talked about helping homeless people and they came up with the idea that we can build a whole system which not only help them to get food and clothes but also help them to find jobs for the future. I think this idea is brilliant since this system helps the homeless people in a more sustainable way.

This week we just had our presentation on Wednesday. So it's a good news that we basically finished our work for this semester. As for project 3 we did a good job. We went to the zoo, we did the research and we came up with 3 ideas about helping animals. I think we did really well together. Also it's impressive to see another groups' presentations. They all came up with interesting ideas and I think the following week I will see more interesting presentations!

So this week on Monday we went to the Como Zoo for field trip to see how's the animal live in there. Then it turns out that there not so much too see in the Como Zoo. It's pretty disappointed since we all want to see some interesting animals and explore something new that we can do for the animals. Another thing that we did this week is prototyping on Wednesday. We think about a giant zoo with different animals could live in there so that they won't be limited in small local zoo. I think we can come up with more ideas later and have a good presentation next week.

So in this week we started with our project 3. I have to say it's been an fun week to talking about animals and things like that. The topic we got is about how to provide animals a better lives. And we decided to focus on the zoo since that's where we get I touch with animals most. Then we talked about building a big zoo or zoos with specific purposes like researches. We basically divides the problem into to three parts which are "what can we do now", "what can we do in long term" and "what we can do in the future like utopia". Now we decided to go the zoo on Monday to have further research on it and I think we will come up with more ideas there.

This week the guest speaker is from Glitch which is an organization about digital games. He talked about how they started with a student club and then become a nonprofit organization. Then he talked about video game design which is really fun since I'm a big fun of video games. But mostly I just pick games that looks good without thinking too much about how it was designed. Of course the aesthetically value is important. However, Glitch doesn't just make video games but also make people aware of the problems around us. Like the game he showed us on class is about global warming. In this way we can not only having fun playing games but also learn something about the world around us.

The presentations for this week is interesting. There are so many ideas are working well according to their problems. The whole project 2 bring out the idea that we could not only find different problems in our daily lives but also solve them through teamwork. As for our project 2 I think we did pretty well since we came out with the idea to solve the space efficiency problem. We are the first team to present on Wednesday and there was a little problem with the projector so we didn't use it at all. Still we go through the whole presentation and explain our ideas about "Lego desk". Also I find the wristband that can wake you up on the morning was really fun. It's simply and it really fit the need to wake someone up without annoying others.

The week's guest speaker is really interesting since the topic is about biomimicry and design. There are lots of things in design process that involve with biomimicry. By using recycle material we can greatly reduce the consume of wood, water and lots of other things. In the presentation Lisa mentioned Velcro as a design product by using the idea of biomimicry. So this does not only convenient our daily lives but also help the environment. Considering the project 2 which we are actually processing now we can apply some idea from biomimicry to improve it.

So about our project 2 this week we came out some ideas about the prototype. This problem for us is to make the working desk more efficient. First we thought a lot about enlarging the desk to make more space. And we did some thing like folding desk to make the extra space but still looks like normal desk . Then we came up with the idea from Lego. It's like you have a normal desk but you can put other parts on it to have different use. Like you can put some drawers on it and if you want more space you can add a another circle desk at the both sides of the desk. This is also not gonna be a high cost thing since it totally depends on you to add how many parts on it. On the class we use some wood stick to make the first prototype. I think we did a good job with this prototype. And what's more I learned the importance of teamwork since without the teams I can never come out with such a good idea.