J10

Journal 10 (J10): Coleman Project - Personal Documentation

The team:
Be
Ben
Chris
Cindy
Ian
Rachel
(and me)

Previous posts: J08 & J09

WE finished! we did it. yay.

We all worked pretty well together. There were some issues, people showing up late (or not at all), technology not working, etc.

Despite our slow start, because we had taken the time to brainstorm so thoroughly, the decisions started just coming out because we all had a clear vision of the project.

We went from about 4 'finalist' ideas to eventually working on the organized pots idea.

I felt like I contributed a lot to this project. Putting in ~10 hours to model it in SolidWorks, helping guide the initial brainstorming so we wouldn't end up in a 'solution' before we fully defined our 'problem'. Also the final project originated from one of my initial brainstorm problems/ideas.

Dropbox was a really great tool that we used. We uploaded all files and pictures to our file so that we could all have access to up-to-date information. I don't think there was much more I could have done to help facilitate the project. This project was much better than the final project in Design 230. I thought it would have been nice to be able to comment more on the quality of other people's presentations because they may have hit all of the bullet points on the rubric, but they may have had a bad idea, or their logo may not have been very nice. Not saying that everyone's work needs to appeal to everyone, but I would have felt that the grading sheets would have meant more if we were able to comment on the subjective elements as well (because it may have been indicative on how good their brainstorming process was).

I thought our project turned out pretty well, but it was kind of lame that one of the group members didn't show up to the final meeting or presentation.

j09

Journal 09 (J09): Coleman Project - Personal Documentation

The team:
Be
Ben
Chris
Cindy
Ian
Rachel
(and me)

Currently we're in good shape. We have direction and decisions have been made. Now its just all about completing the tasks that we know we have left. We spent a long time figuring out what we were going to do, but that has helped make this part of the process a bit easier. I feel like we're working together as a group decently well. We have a dropbox set up in order to share information, but between google docs and dropbox, neither is perfect. (It would be nice if dropbox had some communication/note taking abilities, although it is much easier to use that google docs).

Currently I've been rendering our product in SolidWorks which has been an annoying process (rebuild errors galore!) but i'm at least 75% done. As part of the group, i've helped contribute ideas and help ensure that we're staying on track, although that seems to be a group effort as we can all get sidetracked from time to time.

This has been one of the better group experiences that I've had where everyone here is contributing ideas and efforts to the project.

We had a meeting today and everyone showed up and we solidified our plan a bit more so we should be ready in plenty of time of wednesday.

Above are some of the initial renderings of the pots and lids as well as a brainstorming sheet and an image of our Coleman Home icon (its not our main logo, just a secondary image that will be incorporated into the packaging and kiosk.

j08

The team:
Be
Ben
Chris
Cindy
Ian
Rachel
(and me)

State of project:
We have made good progress, but we still have a long way to go in order to have a finished product. Not many official decisions have been made, but we are heading in some definite directions. We have been focusing our potential user as being related to a suburban family and we've done our research about them, but we haven't made a final decision on the user.

Here are our various brainstorming sheets:
definitions, categories and problems
problem list continued
Users and strategies
Mind map
Day 2 brainstorming

We've been working fairly well as a group, although it is admitedly difficult in any situation to work with a group of 7 people on a project that requires input and feedback from all members, were doing a pretty good job. The room situation makes it a bit difficult to communicate as we can all be sitting near each other, but not able to hear 2 people down. This in turn makes it difficult for all voices to be heard and to know everything that's being said. I'm hoping that when the project gets a little more 'real' we can split up into smaller groups which would make it easier for communication and in feeling more comfortable in sharing their ideas.

We're heading in a direction, albeit fairly slowly, but I'm sure when we make our final decisions on the user and product, everything else will be able to fall into place rather quickly.

For the first day of brainstorming I helped lead the initial brainstorming process so we didn't end up thinking about products and physical things before we brainstormed the underlying details. That was something that went wrong in Design 230 last quarter when one person in our group (who only attended the class half the time) led our only brainstorming session astray forcing us to decide on the direction of our project hastily at the end of class when we realized that all of our brainstorming that we had done had been for naught. By the time the brainstorming tips and hints were posted, we had already covered each element in depth already.

On the flipside, maybe my overconcern for thinking of solutions too quickly without defining the problem has contributed to our lack of final decisions made, and now we have a lot of work to do.

I think now we all realize that we have done the abstract thinking and now we need some concrete decisions in order to meet the deadline.