1. Work Done and Relevance

This week consisted of taking the ideas and themes from last week, cutting down those ideas into little giblets, and then throwing them into the communal wok to see what permutations we could make of them. In hindsight, with some of these I think there ended up being ... a feeling that "I have to add something meaningful to this"... but especially in later rounds, this internet resulting in too many ideas being on the table, and a whole bunch of them being ignored unintentionally.

This led to a feeling of the board being quite cluttered. Some ideas worth discussing got tossed aside for being too complex to read, or just because the host miscommunicated them and / or didn't want to be hosting.

We also formed teams, and I think a critical part of this was just trying to understand our teammates as people - rather than the descriptive "team". With so many interactions to hold every day, it's faster to dismiss and ignore people than get invested in who they are - so I don't hold it against anyone - but when it comes to people you're going to be working with over a long period of time, if they don't feel like a priority t get along with, then every interaction becomes a chore.

An unfortunate downside of working with a dozen or so teams throughout your syllabus... you're going to end up blanking out a vast majority of them once you leave university and putting them behind you - unless you keep in contact with them. To that end, I'd like to work hard to make this process as painless as possible, complementing what my teammates do so that we can leave with something interesting.

2. Work to Do

We've had a whole lot of ideas, discussion thoughts on where we could go with the project... but decisions and research are still ongoing. The downside to this is that it can seem like progress has halted, when in truth it's just ongoing but in multiple directions. I should collate what we have into some brief notes that the team can use more easily.

3. Things that Inspired Me

Less so than before... while I saw a number of new pieces of technology this week, nothing really struck me as "that's awesome"

a. Mira by Alonso Martinez

Tabletop robots that are super cute - I really liked that something so simple - uncomplicated designs could convey so much emotion just with angling eyes, and the smoothness of their movement.

But more importantly than that is the whole approach and process that led to them being created... Bringing life to creatures by focusing on their movement, as opposed to their features, like being able to talk or use information. A subtle combination of aesthetic appeal and mechanics that works enough to provide the illusion that the thing you're looking at is a small creature, rather than a bundle of electronics.

Thought Train & Carriages

• Help
• Fix up the notes and such for this afternoon
• Some sketches of yesterday mornings brainstorming would be nice