CIID: Day 2 – 5
TEAM WORK
The first two days were mini projects and the last few were on a collaborative, design thinking inspired endeavor. We were assigned an idea to tackle: Create a Disaster Kit. Things that’d go in a box, a compact, finite set of tools, to help users in a chosen crisis, the things in the box complete and support a certain goal mapped out in a written manual.
Gosh, what tool out there can be built that might help in an event of world crisis? Well, we have that one for you, a little something we called, “Talk to the Hand.”
We ended up exploring the sign language because it has universality and crossover whether you learned sign language in one world hemisphere or another. The gist of our idea was: what if you were a hipster, there were a designed system such as assembled tool like an animatronic hand, that could facilitate communication between people. The tool could help parties of communicators to interpret meaning and help each other. For example, a verbal command instigates the hand tool would respond with the correlating gesture from the ASL dictionary…The idea was super fun once we embraced it, let it get a bit loose, and we got to free wheel with the 3D printers and laser cutter. Can’t argue with that.
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My group was fabulous. Check out my fabulous partner, Maureen Laverty- Selina. Her work is also on Facebook or Insta– so clever and technically capable. Game for any idea. Loved working with her.
Working with great partners makes the whole world sparkle.
Iterative Process
Design Thinking always seems to begin with PostIs and affinity diagramming our individual ideas to best point us to our Disaster Kit “big idea.”
Next, we started with paper prototypes, explored acrylic, and ended up with Little Bits and a hand assembled from laser cut board parts. We used a pattern from Pinterest and Instructables. Our group had gone through a series of iterations – which is the best material, we got mired in the specifics of the disaster and then realized we just wanted to use the 3D printer. We went back and forth. It was testy and tiring. The end was charming and I’m very happy with how it turned out.
It was a fabulous program. Copenhagen is a dreamscape.
Reads & References
- Maureen Laverty- Selina (Facebook) (Insta)
- Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (Fabrication Workshop)
- Ultimaker 2
- We more or less used this source, Automaton Hand, by alasdair.robertson
(Pleeeeeease, Maureen was the true wizard here who figured out this hand assembly.) - Laser Cut Claw (tell me if you figure out how to get this guy together)
XO,
H
Hannahloulou 