SmartSurfaces, Day One, 9/11/09

With the first day of class over, it is time to make a few reflections on how this semester will work. I feel that the class is an intriguing idea, and that the whole semester is going to turn out excellently.

Day One: Project

Our first project was to design and construct a system for transporting sand from point A to points B and C in space, at distances of under a meter.

The result of the first day's project can be described as nothing but a resounding failure, but through failure is the only true way to learn. The failure was nearly universal, spanning from communication to design to implementation, and though our idea looked excellent on the drawing board, it really should have stayed on the drawing board. Every group had very similar problems, and no group truly had the same grasp on what the problem was and what the parameters were. As such, three of the four groups had significant failures, and one of the groups, while successful, had a project that still could have been improved with more time.

My group was more than up to the task as individuals, but as a team we failed to achieve the cohesion necessary for making such a task a success in such a short period of time. The overall design was truly understood by only half of the team, who delegated tasks to the other half of the team without enough explanation. Overall, my group makeup was excellent. I feel that the advantage in this class will lie with people who are able to think with a background in more than one discipline, such as Eric. People will have different strengths on different projects, based on their backgrounds, so when we reach more technical portions requiring knowledge of programming the engineers will have advantages, while when we are doing more hands-on projects the artists will have definite advantages. This project was one in which the artists in our group excelled, while the engineers got bogged down with grandiose ideas and the architects were not in their element.

There were two major design roadblocks for our team. The first was that we thought that the entire system had to be built to be free-standing. Two of the groups utilized the tables as structural support, which we were led to believe could only be used as a 0 surface, not as a structural support. This may have been just our interpretation of what we were told by the professors, but the point is moot. I feel that if we had known that, we would have had more time available to work on the more complex aspects of our project, instead of having two members solely devoted to building free-standing structures. The second was that our system, which we thought was fairly simple, was in fact extremely complex. With a different medium than cardboard and duct tape (i.e. wood), we would have been more than able to complete the task to our design specifications, but we over-engineered our project for the medium available.

Day One: Thoughts Going Forward

I feel that I need to re-tool my thought process for this class. The way I think, I am a designer, and I am an improver, but I am not quite as good at the implementation steps that take place in between - the big picture is my forte, you could say. My strength within the group, which can also be seen as a weakness, was that I looked at the downside to most design ideas, in terms of how they would impact the idea as a whole. I think next week I will approach things differently, and hopefully things will work out better. I look forward to seeing how other people in the class do things.