Assignment 4: Design Proposal
is is an intentionally short assignment (~2 weeks). Building upon a full semester’s worth of work about physics and experimentation, students will now come up with potential innovations that can be tested in your device. This will require you to distill your idea into the very simplest form, to answer: what am I testing? And how can it be applied to the vernacular architecture of the region that I studied?
Future Development and Next Steps (25%):
Once you’ve reflected on your results, figure out what they mean. How would you improve your testing device or your methods? How else can your apparatus be used?
Access (25%):
As buildings become more technologically complex, performance decisions are often relegated to the opaque domain of engineers and material scientists, further perpetuating disciplinary silos and sociotechnical divides. Instead, innovators should rely on simple, accessible strategies instead of overly-sophisticated and mechanically-driven designs. The maker movement, for example, has been compared with a new Industrial Revolution (Anderson 2012) for the ability of bottom-up design to productively disrupt mainstream innovation systems dominated by disciplinary experts and inaugurate “a new age of sustainable consumption and participatory design” (Davies 2003).
Consider: Who can use the testing device? Is it meant to be used in the laboratory? In the field? What training is required? How can you make it more accessible?
Innovative Design (50%):
Get funky with it. Think of a real-life application where your device might be used to make peoples thermal experiences better. Come up with a specific research question for this phase of the project (it will be a development of your original research question, but should not replace it). Ultimately, it will be up to you how you represent this idea, but you should consider using the tools that we learned this semester (fabrication and graphics). If you are able to test your idea in your device, even better!
Final Deliverables
There will not be a presentation dedicated to this specific assignment. Instead, you will integrate it into your website, final presentation (visual) and in the final paper (written). Your website should be fully updated by the final presentation.
Final Presentation: Tuesday, May 10, 2-4:30 PM
Final Paper due: Thursday, May 12, 2 PM (by email)
Future Development and Next Steps (25%):
Once you’ve reflected on your results, figure out what they mean. How would you improve your testing device or your methods? How else can your apparatus be used?
Access (25%):
As buildings become more technologically complex, performance decisions are often relegated to the opaque domain of engineers and material scientists, further perpetuating disciplinary silos and sociotechnical divides. Instead, innovators should rely on simple, accessible strategies instead of overly-sophisticated and mechanically-driven designs. The maker movement, for example, has been compared with a new Industrial Revolution (Anderson 2012) for the ability of bottom-up design to productively disrupt mainstream innovation systems dominated by disciplinary experts and inaugurate “a new age of sustainable consumption and participatory design” (Davies 2003).
Consider: Who can use the testing device? Is it meant to be used in the laboratory? In the field? What training is required? How can you make it more accessible?
Innovative Design (50%):
Get funky with it. Think of a real-life application where your device might be used to make peoples thermal experiences better. Come up with a specific research question for this phase of the project (it will be a development of your original research question, but should not replace it). Ultimately, it will be up to you how you represent this idea, but you should consider using the tools that we learned this semester (fabrication and graphics). If you are able to test your idea in your device, even better!
Final Deliverables
There will not be a presentation dedicated to this specific assignment. Instead, you will integrate it into your website, final presentation (visual) and in the final paper (written). Your website should be fully updated by the final presentation.
Final Presentation: Tuesday, May 10, 2-4:30 PM
Final Paper due: Thursday, May 12, 2 PM (by email)