Preparations

This course involves building a product which may require some key manufacturing skills and the knowledge of the equipment. To provide us with the best chance of being able to create our products in a safe both safely and as accurately as possible we are required to complete 3 inductions. The first induction I completed in O-Week of Uni which took place at the Maker Space workshop. Our two guides were Blair and Grant who were very experienced in their field and showed us how to use some of the machinery that we will most likely want to utilize in our construction. I have used most of the equipment before however it was really interesting to see how the laser cutter worked and just how accurate it was when cutting. Although not related to the course as such but the 3D printing stations all around the workshop were also awesome to watch and see what they create.

Week 1

Tuesday

In our first class on Tuesday, the start was mainly all about what would be involved in the course and answering any questions or queries we had. It was great to do this because most of us haven’t taken a 4 unit course before so it was helpful to understand how the workload increases and also what will be expected of us compared to the regular 2 unit courses that we have done for most of our time at university. Being one of the final courses for my IT degree it seems as if we are putting all our prior knowledge from other design courses into one final product which we will hold an exhibition for at the end of the semester. This will include schools and industry professionals coming in to see how our product works. While this sounds a bit overwhelming it should be a great opportunity to show off our skills and see what awesome gadget we can create in our groups.

Wednesday

Wednesday’s class started to become more hands on with developing inspiration for designs that would be required over the next couple weeks. We got into groups to talk about our challenge that we were given and the group I was in did “Human Technology Symbiosis”. It was actually really interesting to listen to other group members and a key point that we discovered was that to improve technology we need to provide it with data, in the form of machine learning etc but at the same time we are not willing to share this data to maintain privacy. Also, there were many positives and negatives about Tech – Human Symbiosis. One point I made was with targeted advertising and how its purpose is to help you find what your looking for and for companies to reach you but many times it goes way overboard such as looking one thing up online and then all you see for the next week is that product and any tiny little spinoffs of it. It seems to be a case of where you draw the line and what we must expect in the future when the ability of technology increases. After this exercise we went to new groups and played a game with cards where each suit represented a different topic, eg. Design or quality of.. It was really enjoyable and we came up with a lot of funny sentences out of the words that we were given.

Looking Ahead

Next week looks to be quite busy as we all have to complete an idea that we started to develop at the end of class on Wednesday. This needs to be an idea with a physical component attached to it. I have started to come up with a few ideas but still need to explore the possibilities of them working and ultimately do more research. I will post back next week in more detail on the idea that I present.