IDEA CRITIQUE

lots of ideas presented were definitely creative and useful if It were to come into life, however many (including mine) tend to develop from a thing / an object that already exists, in the example ideas that Lorna posted on blackboard on the other hand, are completely new and unique, at least I personally wouldn’t thought about those until I saw them.

So instead of going towards the direction of enhancing / upgrading an exisiting object, personally I’d think inventing something from scratch that isn’t based on any pre-exisiting model would be much more interesting and flexible. In my opinion, we tend not to think out of the box because we are surrounded by everyday objects, interacting and seeing them over and over again, therefore so are our minds.

A majority (including mine) of the ideas has a focus on enhancing everyday life or experience, some rare qualities of an idea such as playfulness, novelty, open-endedness, tend to be neglected, which is not a problem because enhancing everyday life is what humanity should always strive for, but I’ve not seen an idea which is a combination of those values, which is fun to interact with, useful for people’s experience/convenience, caring for people’s feeling etc… Fortunately we could combine different ideas from week 2 to develop one that has all the values mentioned in the next week.

INDUCTION SESSIONS

Tuesday soldering session

I was introduced to soldering on Tuesday, although I was not completely clueless about what it is and why it is useful. The techniques and safety measures that were taught in class definitely was new to me as a third year student who is more interested in software / web based projects than physical computing’s.

Arduino was what I used in DECO2300 but it was nearly a year ago and due to my lack of interest in physical tech the soldering session was certainly refreshing and useful if I want to get through the course.

Wednesday space session

Safety and rules introduction of the room 78-207, things to remember :

• wear covered shoes (I didn’t and had to borrow a pair of donated shoes……..ewwwww)
• Use the right tool for the right job
• keep the area clean even when I wasn’t the one responsible for the mess
• There’s a door for loading should be kept closed
• where to put stuff (eg. sharp wastes to the sharp bin)
• don’t open the door for anyone
• don’t work in the dark
• ask when in doubt

etc etc… a lot of them are common sense.

CONCLUSION (rambling)

In the second week of the course we went through a ton of presentations, be it live or recorded. Even though the course makes me get up at 8 in the morning, it was absolutely worth the struggle after listening to so many inspirational ideas.

I signed up to the course late so I had absolutely zero idea what was going on in the first week before drowning in the sea of content and announcement published on blackboard right after I enrolled.

Unfortunately though I could not participate in the theming part of both Tue and Wed sessions because I had an induction session to attend plus another that I missed in the first week, It’s been hectic for sure for only the second week of the semester. The good thing was that I was inspired by several ideas presented throughout the week, which certainly will affect my decision on project theme selection in the following week.