Feedback
1. Tom O'Hare
- "I had giant tinkertoys when I was a kid and I loved them."
- Idea: use PVC pipes, just create joints and accessories to go along with them.
- How and where is it used (home or school) this will guide some design decisions
- Look into after school programs. Tom worked with High School of Computers and Technology in the Bronx
- Find existing curriculum to modify
- Try out a range of complexity for each idea (simple<-->complex)
- Most important things to consider are SCALE & IMPACT
- Visit Harlem's Children's Museum
- See movie called "The Best School in the World"
- Make sure product is "ungendered" to balance inequalities and get girls into science
- If seeking early age for greater impact working even younger like 3 yrs old may be appropriate
- At what age group are interest solidified?
- Are these tools too demanding for children? It it a lot of work to make just simple things
- Instead try including premade parts to use with custom made things
- Consider the middle ground between my 2 design strategies.
- Balance these factors: impetus, catalyst, quiet assistance
- Should be abstract and not recognizable like a bike to allow kids to create their own forms
- Are vehicles gender biased or gender neutral?
- Science is taught in kindergarten, see what and how it is taught.
- How can the products grow with kids to maintain interest in the toy and allow for growing minds and bodies
- Emphasize the play aspects
- What are the causes of declining interest
5. PJ Carlino (Materials 4 & Thesis Prototyping Professor)
- Study what and how upper level students learn and simplify for younger age group
- Integrate the making of simple parts to use WITH existing products
- Explore other construction opportunities outside of vehicles
- Consult Material Connection for sustainable material substitutes for Blue Foam
- Use cheap material to build out of, or reusable like playdough, or make you own building materials
- Experiment with varying degrees of complexity (simple<-->complex)
- Blend 2 design strategies to find a middle ground
- Reference Kindergarten or older students science curriculum and teaching methods
- Combine creation of parts from scratch with pre-made parts
- Building materials? Make your own? Material Connection?
2 comments:
David,
Check out "With New Toys, More Assembly Required " in the Home section of the New York Times today- a relevant piece on your subject. Also get inspired with the Leonardo da Vinci (perhaps) @ Times Square - re: the making of parts...
-Len
David,
I'm really sorry that I didn't make it over to speak with you at Monday's review. I looked over your board and the comments that you recieved at the review. I am hoping that you will be developing the wooden bicycle idea in the Spring. There product concept is a perfect embodiment of your mission: the bicycle with interchangeable gears provides little kids with a hands-on experience that they will love. They get to assemble the bike themselves, and then ride it, so they will understand the mechanisms more intimately then if you just give them a bike. By swapping parts, they will get a hands-on lesson about gear ratios and the operation of simple machines.
This could be a very strong thesis project, and I am imagining a real product coming out of this at the end. It is a very ambitious thesis, because you will have to a lot of construction and fabrication, but I really hope you decide to do it, because it could be great.
I am a little unclear about some features of the design. For example, I don't know the purpose of the two gears up near the handle bars. Now that I look at it again, I am guessing that you are just storing extra gears there. I was also wondering why you chose to create a plywood sandwich with the gears and the drive chain hidden inside. I suppose that is for safety, so that kids don't get their clothes or fingers caught in the gears. But, it looks like it would be necessary to dismantle the whole bike in order to switch the gears, and that discourages their experimentation. Also, don't forget that you will need some sort of tensioner to take up slack in the drive chain as you change the diameter of the rear gear. In multi-speed bikes, this is done with a fairly complicated mechanism, and I would guess that you want to avoid anything like that here.
In conclusion, I think this is a great idea, and I look forward to working with you on it in the Spring. this is a product that appears to be unique and highly responsive to your original purpose as articulated in hypothesis and mission statement. congratulations.
Post a Comment