Choose Your own Adventure

        The Choose Your Own Adventure Module is exactly what it sounds like. Our job was to iterate on a previous design project we had done in this class based on our choice of two step modules.

        I did the entrepreneurship and testing report modules. For the entrepreneurship module, I had to adapt my design to three potential situations and present the changes made in video format. For the testing report module, I had to develop a procedure for testing specific elements of my design and report on them in some way.

        For the entrepreneurship challenges, I used ideas that had originally been scrapped or unfinished in the design and tried to adapt them to the individual challenges. I feel like the first and last challenge went well for me, but I struggled more than I thought I would with the second “On a Budget” challenge. Not only did I have to remove several key elements of the design, but the replacement solutions I came up with only reduced the cost by a marginal amount.

        For the testing module, I had to come up with new solutions than what I had initially wanted due to a lack of resources. If I had to do this again, I would try to test for a modular design for the spikes. I’d try to design flaps on a 3D-printed spike so that I could ‘plug’ the tubing into multiple sides and test for how watertight the spike was as well as the water flow through the end of the pipe.

        I planned for both of these modules at the same time, but once I felt solid in my plans I switched all of my focus on the entrepreneurship challenge until it was finished. I held off on recording the videos so that I could switch my focus fully onto developing the test spikes and running the planned experiment on them. Yet again I switched my focus back to the entrepreneurship challenges to record the videos and lastly, I flipped back around to the testing report to get it fully written and finished. The back and forth kept me from getting overwhelmed by the work at hand while also giving my brain adequate breaks between projects to give me more time to reflect and adapt.

        I will say that I did not remember the detail of the report being creative and as such I did not allow myself enough time to create a presentation of the quality that I normally would. That is something I would certainly change if I were to do this module again; writing down all of the requirements before I begin my planning, so I don’t end up missing the forest for the trees like I did this time around. Normally I would make sure to do this step first, but I suspect the size of the modules distracted me from my normal processes.

        I learned that in the future, I should make sure that I’m taking the time to plan my approach and follow it. For most of these design projects, I let the flow of my thought process guide me to where I want to be. However, this time around my thought process was all over the place and slowing down to plan helped me get my head on straight while still letting me be creative with my solutions. I think if I can get a wireframe down of my thoughts and plans in future projects and try to follow it, my designs will be more consistent and easier for me to develop and iterate on.

        Above all, I’m actually most proud of my initial design and how well it held up in the face of these two modules. The grid design and the modularity and the focus on environmental friendliness of the original design lent itself well to the entrepreneurship challenges, and the foundations that the design was built on also held up well under the scrutiny of the testing module. While the spike design was vague, that allowed me to make changes as I built the prototype spikes and since the measurements in the initial design bordered more on suggestion than definition, I could scale the model down while still leaving about half a foot between the two test spikes.