Last Tuesday of BDS 102

WORK DAY.... we gotta wrap it all up and get everything done by final day.

More critiques...

So the other class came in too then left and we had a an explanation about how to bind a book and Linda demonstrated for both classes very nicely how to do that and that was interesting for those who were going to need that method... otherwise it was another work and think day..

homework: refinements of the refinement of our original book version

Fusion of Tom & Linda's classes for open individual critique

Last thursday Tom's class came over to ours and tehre was cardboard set over the garbage and that served as a presentation table, it was in the middle of class, in front of teh blackboard, and after we were put in groups for feedback on our experiences and models, each student went up to that presentation place and set his/her model of the book so it is visible to everyone and presented their idea and talked about how and why they made the design of book tehy had done, and answered questions from other students if they had any...

i liked that session i thought it was interesting, I'm glad people liked my idea and model, but i did get useful feedback and advice on how to make it better which i will incorporate while refining my book...

Visit to The Spencer research center + own work time..

so we went to the Spencer research center behind strong hall and we were led to a room where a few books in different assembly styles were displayed on a table and this lady talked to us about each book, and let us touch the ones we liked to see how they worked... this was supposed to inspire us for our own book ..like gave us ideas on the different ways we could put together our book or pages...

then we just did whatever we each had to do in class.. and we have to print a grid and have a full scale b&w mock up for next time ...wow...

Experiences, experiences...

So today we all shared our experiences, and I really liked them I thought they were very interesting .. there was

blowing a dandelion...
riding a boat on a river...
flying a kite...
baking a cake...
watching a game at ku...
popping bubble wrap...
making popcorn...
visiting another country/culture...
using a head massager..


&mine: shopping! (more specifically browsing clothes in a shop)


it was very amusing.. I really enjoyed class today..

we also looked at a bunch of books the other class had already finished and turned in, to get inspired, an idea, and all..

then we spent the rest of the time thinking about ways to actually make our book, how it would look like, be structured..

Seat project : THE END

We gathered all our seats in room 315 and placed them in the middle a little scattered and sat in a circle around them.

We talked a little about the seats, then got into groups of 3 (us+ person from our class that we know + person from other class that we haven't talked to yet)
so I was with Brittany and this other girl from Tom's class and we talked (critiqued too) about each of our chairs, and I found that very interesting.

we talked a little more about the seats and Tom picked some that he wanted to hear about so the students whose seats were pointed at had to talk a lot about the process, why they did it like that, what they think of it, what they think a seat is, ad listen to what others have to say.
Tom was getting confused by some of the seats because tehy didnt look like seats, so he was questioned several students about what their definition of a seat was, and opened a large debate that almost never ended...


we took a break then a few other students talked about their chairs, tehn we talked about the chairs that had steel in them too...


we also went to see Jeremy's class who did their books and I really liked looking at them because they were very well done and looked fun and interesting (although it did look like a big challenge)


now we have to think of an experience to bring to class for Thursday ;D

Starting @ the wood shop...

checking chair design, dimensions and overall look, height, weight, size + deciding which size of plywood to buy+ buying the 1/2 inch thick wood board piece + drawing the shapes to be cut + cutting it down to pieces that should compose my chair + fixing cutting glitches + gluing and nailing pieces of wood together + waiting for glue to dry + finishing off by sanding it A LOT


was a VERY LONG AND TIRING AND DUSTY  AND NOISYprocess...honestly... I spent a lot of time on it..

friday: 4 hours...
saturday: about 4 hours...
monday: about 2 hours...
tuesday: about 1 hour..

total? about 11 hours !!!

can't wait to get done and finish off with the last project!

Last Thursday was just more critiques in class..

and introduction to the workshop + another cardboard minimalist chair is to be done! + its sketches! not again............. -____-

Wrapping up the chair project?

worked on a totally new chair because it had to relate to the person i wrote my essay about: my childhood best friend.

so basically the chair in form and structure had to represent and "contain" elements caracterizing the basic characteristics of our relationship (close, fun, etc)

i mentioned that she was really close to me, and that whether or not she was there, she always had my back, we were always friends, so my chair is composed of 1 pieces but is still sitable on whether one of the pieces is gone or not.
I received feedback about it during a critique in class today.


we went to the common workshop for an introduction tour and apparently we have to take a test before using the tools inside for teh next project, which apparently concerns making a different seat out of wood, but i still don't really understand what it's about...

1st exercise: cardboard chair : done! but still more to come...

we just finished our 1st cardboard chair and Linda & Tom's classes got together in Tom's class, everyone laid their chair on the floor and the critiques started...
I think it was very interesting, we questioned the main most important and basic aspects of a good functional chair...things i never even thought about concerning chairs...we discussed what makes a good chair? a pretty chair? a functional chair? and a lot of details were mentioned...

people choose chairs that look sturdy, that look like they can handle being sat on (that is sit-able), and it should look like a chair too ( or something that is a seat).
aethetics isn't important at all as long as everything else works great.



So I really liked that little critique/discussion about chairs and their properties.. it was really interesting.. i learned a lot of useful new information that should be helpful with this project...

otherwise we have an essay to do for tuesday about duality...and another essay due on the 29th + we have to build a prototype of a chair for the 29th, using any amount of cardboard that we want, but of course it should be well functional..

AND we have to have our final ready by the 31st of March...

Not starting the new project yet..

So I thought we'd be starting the next chair project but actually Thursday's class was still about the treehouse, and specifically the final posters we had to make.. so we all spent that time refining our posters on our laptops, and it took me so many different trials to come up with the last good one!!!

it's not funny when you just finished 5 differnet models of posters and Adobe crashes very unexpectedly just like that!!

and doing it over again... so much hard work

I'm glad that's over anyway.. we already had a sit-able chair to make out of a 4x4 piece of cardboard for next Tuesday! so that's what I was worried about next..

Last hours spent on The treehouse project..

We put our posters up to get critiques and to know which one to keep and improve to turn on on Monday. We had to have our process notebooks ready by Thursday.

otherwise we spent class time wandering around checking other classrooms' posters to "get inspired" and to see how others represented their concepts, their treehouse, their ideas...

we were just finishing up on Tuesday...


Wonder what this next project is gonna be like...

Now we have posters to do?

So some of the people in class who had done their posters projected them to get feedback from class and from the teacher.. so we did that for a while.. tehn each of us worked on what we had left to do.. in my case i had to start designing my poster and do 3 versions of it and print one for next time .. and have my process notebook ready!

Treehouse browsing in & out of class...

So today we all had our models done (well, almost everybody), and Linda came to every student to talk to us about our treehouse design, question it, see if it's good or needs something or is just fine teh way it is..

otherwise we went to other classes and checked out their treehouses models, and some were pretty cool, original, but sometimes too unbalanced or high to be a real treehouse...

some of the teachers passed around too

and we just spent the rest of class doing whatever left each of us had to do, whether it was work on our model more, sketch more, analyse it more or anything else...


We need to finish up this project for next week...

3-HOUR LONG Lecture...

Thursday 24th of February 2011,  went into class, and thought that I'd have time to work on my sketches or "filter" them or talk to the teacher about them or just work in class.. but we had to go straight to the 315 room where someone gave a very loooong lecture on perspective and then how to use the application Sketch up (which I both already knew very well so it was very boring!!)


there was a break in between but extremely short! like 1 min..

then we just all went back to our classrooms to get our stuff and go...


FINALLY after HOURS and DAYS of DEEP thinking and comparing my treehouses sketches and trying to get inspired, I drew a whole new treehouse model in all sides then I started out on my treehouse model building on Friday and spent almost 6 HOURS in a row working on it all by myself!
with a little music around to help pass time and make it sort of amusing..

AND I FINALLY FINISHED IT!!  after coming home that day and adding a little last touches I finally finished it!!

I'm SO PROUD!! XD  ;D

took pictures of it from all sides.. now I think I'll have to sketch it MORE... oh man...

wondering what we are going to do on Tuesday! presentation ?

Critiques, advice & in-class work...

February 22nd of 2011:

We had an explanation of how our treehouses would be analyzed: how it could be reached? who are the users?what kind of tree is used? etc...
And we also had our sketches of treehouses looked at, critiqued a little, got some advice from the teacher, and got really inspired from an example of a moodboard from Blackboard but also for treehouse design ideas from that huge treehouse book, although the ones inside were all so professional.. they made all of the models and real treehouses look so original, fun, magical, and easy to build!! which was obviously not the case.. but that's the successful part of it: achieving perfection while displaying simplicity & originality ;)

I still don't know which of my treehouse designs I am going to pick; I hope I will soon... I browsed my collages of houses with Linda and "tagged" some outdoor designs that were interesting, other than that I showed her my moodboard that I did by myself just by researching on what it was, and she said I was on the right track, although it wasn't quite exactly what the other teachers have explained on Blackboard.. YAY anyway!! XD


also showed her my Google Sketchup similar 3D model because I wanted to try on a pattern for the wallpaper of my treehouse, but I changed my mind about that now...

more drawings for next time and gotta start the building!!

Hmm.. this one or that one??

I started drawing and sketching a few treehouses.. got "a little" wild with it, but hey! I have to come up with 40 sketches of them!! then choose one to build a real model of!!! this is hard.. I'm not done with all 40 sketches yet, so I'm far from knowing which one which be the one I build as a model...can't wait to figure that out!

Here are some of my favorites...

II. Treehouse Project: Drawing/Modeling for 3D

Treehouses treehouses...

first class about this (Tuesday 17th of feb 11') was introduction to this project, we were told that we have to go out and draw/sketch and photograph trees, so we did that for about 15 min, then came back to class.. then we kept drawing trees and 'refining" our sketches fro the rest of the class because our teacher went to give a lecture.. and when she came back some of the students had already left the classroom, the rest of us were told our homework, and which was basically more and more sketches, of treehouses!!

okay, don't know how this is going to go.. not a fan of architecture.. or building, or anything that has to do with that..

our homework was literally this:

Step One: Ideate/Conceptualize
Find a tree and location for your treehouse. Pay close attention to the site…LOOK...what does it tell you the treehouse should be?

DRAW IT.
PHOTOGRAPH IT & THE SITE. MULTIPLE ANGLES.
PRINT OUT PHOTOS, TRACE OVER/ IDEATION SKETCHES.
SKETCHES, SKETCHES, SKETCHES.
 
Visualize and find ideas for you treehouse by doing the following:

-create an audience persona for the person(s) that will use your treehouse
-write an associated word list to capture and explore initial thoughts of what the tree could be.
-create a moodboard that makes your wordlist visual
-photocopy images of houses, make a collage 

don't know what a moodbaord is or how to make my collage, let's see what happens next...

Last day with the wayfinding project: FINALLY!!

Tuesday the 15th of february 2011 was presentation day of everybody's wayfinding situation and so we all went to the big lecture room in teh Art & Design building and each group from each class of the 8h30 section presented by turn their project.

I really liked everybody's. I thought everyone was very innovative in their solutions to the problems they found and I don't see why they shouldn't really be carried out on campus; I think they should because it would make life much easier for all of us..

My group went almost last, and we did pretty good, we were very proud of our presentation but sadly I was sick so I had no voice and couldn't participate in teh speaking, presentation...

Overall, it was a good day, I kind of like thsi project now that I'm done with it, haha, I feel like I really learned a lot, did something I never did before very independently, and I enjoyed working with my group, Amy & Jerry are the best!

good job guys!

let's hope this next project is easy..

More public critiques?

Today our teacher was absent so we went to Jeremy's class and each group of their class and 2 from our class (including our group) projected their powerpoints or videos and spoke about them, and got feedback from Jeremy and sometimes also the students themselves...
We went last because we had a lot to include in our presentation and we kept discussing that for a while, arranging thing, re-organizing, changing things, replacing this by that, sending files to each otehr and etc.

I really liked some of the presentations done by others though I really think they succeeded in replacing the original current confusing signs with much clearer and simpler ones that are easy and quick to read and understand.

We were told what we did was really good, and got advice about the signs on the floors of the SMA for example, so I guess we'll have to work on that..


otherwise, I had to take pictures of what our group did as work (sketches, the model, etc.) for my process pdf but other than that it's been a good day, good day...


^^

Coming up with solutions & testing them ;D

Me, Amy and Jerry were supposed to meet up during the weekend to go to SMA and test our "solution signs" but the problem was that we didn't come up with them yet, and we were not sure if the museum was open during the weekend or even on Mondays either, plus Jerry would not have had the time to finish up the model of the 3rd and 4rth floors of the SMA by that day, and the weather conditions gave me a feeling that our meeting was going to be canceled so I decided to go the next day we had talked about this in class (so after Thursday, it was a Friday) and so I went that day to SMA with another friend of mine who had already been once to the SMA but who never heard of the Donald Judd art piece (2nd order thinking) and this time i put up the solutions signs (I had come up with at home and printed) to see how the student would orientate herself this time, to analyze how useful the signs are, if they produce the result me and my group were expecting (that the student finds her way easier and faster without any confusion or hesitation).

And the results were as good as we wanted them to be!

here are the signs I made on Word:

here are the images that consisted of my powerpoint presentation for my solution testing part of our wayfinding project:

Just another critique session..

I came late today because the bus driver didn't budge for MORE THAN 30 MINUTES today in the morning and took sooo long to get to campus!!!

anyway nothing much happened while I was on my way, only some groups volunteered to present their situation on the big screen in front of Richard and get feedback, but we were positive about ours so we didn't find that necessary..

we know what we have to do for next time (test our solutions) so we'll have to meet up on sunday probably and see what happens!

Experimenting & Postponing...

I had a friend of mine do the "experiment", which was try to go by herself (with me behind her) to the Spencer Art Museum and find the Donald Judd piece.

So we went and I documented the process by taking pictures and asking her questions, to better analyze teh situation and how she was handling it.
I created a PowerPoint Presentation and sent it to my team members Amy and Jerry, and they really liked it, so it was up to Richard and the other teachers now to tell me how I've done on this job.

Here are the images that make up my whole PPT presentation:

Unfortunately , I didn't get to meet up with my team because of the canceling of classes on Tuesday February 1st 2011 at night but also Wednesday 2nd of February 2011 because of the bad weather conditions outside... too much snow... WAY too much cold too...

so during that time we had to discuss things via email and text messaging.. pretty fun actually!!

of course the free time we just got should be used to catch up on our work and readings so that's something we obviously had to do too...

day 2: Quick thinking before public presentation to all the other BDS classes and teachers

So a few minutes after we came into class we were told that we had to finish up our revisions of our presentation of our situation (wayfinding problem/ solution) so we gathered our notes, sketches and thought of how we were going to present our situation while others were taking their turns.

It turned out pretty good actually and I was really proud of my team's work and our great idea (finding the Donald Judd art piece in the Spencer Art Museum situation). Richard really liked it and other teachers seemed to liked it too and gave ius positive feedback which was really moral-lifting, after all the confusion we've been going through.
Our classmates also told us they especially liked the simple sketches we presented while explaining our situation, so it was definitely something positive.

So after that we had to go back to the classroom and listen to some details concerning the readings on blackboard that had to be done by next class and also discovered that we lost one of our group members, which is sad, but oh well, we were doing just fine by ourselves already so hopefully it won't be a problem ;)

Our homework was to really go and find people to experience the situation we had, so we'll have to pick some students (friends maybe) and make them figure their way to the Donald Judd art piece in The Spencer Museum of Art.

Project 1: I. Human(People)-Centered Design

The first day of BDS 102 (01/25/2011) was introduction day, to the class, between students, about the new course and the project we had to start on. It was interesting as a new project and seemed very challenging and after the lectures things weren't really very clear or precise about exactly how we should proceed in order to successfully complete this project but we'll have to figure that out by ourselves, in each team that we've been put in.

My team members were : Amy, Sarah, and Jerry. 

First we started listing all of the possible situations that we could find oursleves in need of the wayfinding technique, then we shared a few as a group and chose among them and made up some new ones on a large piece of paper to lay down our ideas, and to be able to see everything we had in mind clearly in fornt of us, so we can decide which idea to choose and use for to do the project.

I think we came up with a lot of pretty good ideas, now we still have to agree on one of them to start working with. 

From that sort of mind map that we did, we had to think about the different steps of the 2 or 1 wayfinding options that we'll have to represent later on.