WaterProof: Mid-Semester Review and Prototyping Beginnings

Solar Studios MSR Blog Post   Before beginning ideation, we narrowed our how can we statement to: how can we help the Rice community become more aware of their water consumption through an installation art piece at the Solar Studios? We also finalized four specific design goals for our installation:   Successfully built and installed in the Solar Studios space by April 20th Appeals to a broad audience Has visibility on campus/is visited by Rice community Impacts visitors in some way – emotional reaction, change in individual behavior, or action by university administration.   After narrowing our problem space, hcw, … Continue reading WaterProof: Mid-Semester Review and Prototyping Beginnings

Team Tools for the Homeless: IDEATE and MSR

This week our team started the ideate process and presented our progress during the mid semester review (MSR). We described our story of how we got from wanting to help the homeless to our concrete how can we statement: How can we ensure homeless individuals in Houston’s tent camps have reliable access to the water needed to maintain good hygiene? We also brainstormed that our solution would achieve the following design goals: Something that you don’t have to carry or would be easy to carry/lightweight Sustainable – should be able to use more than once Cost-effective enough to reproduce Accessible/easy … Continue reading Team Tools for the Homeless: IDEATE and MSR

Lend a Hand: MSR/IDEATE

How can we create a durable, comfortable, modular device to assist users without the use of their fingers to write efficiently? Design Goals: Modularity: Can be used with at least 3 writing utensils and utensils can be switched out Ease of Use: The user should be able to put on and remove the device in two minutes Affordability: The device should cost less than $30   Here are some of our best ideas so far: These post its illustrate our idea of having different places to attach a writing utensil on our device to accommodate for different writing situations (like at … Continue reading Lend a Hand: MSR/IDEATE

Hermann Park: MSR/ IDEATE

  During the first half of the semester we narrowed our HCW statement to: HCW make groups at HP more aware of the community involvement that sustains HP? We plan to continue to narrow down the user and location as we move forward with our project. From this HCW we said that we wanted our design to be fun, interactive, attractive various ages, informative, durable, harmonious yet distinct in its space, and engaging. During ideation we came up with a wide variety of ideas ranging from a complete remodeling of the park to simply putting signs are the park. After … Continue reading Hermann Park: MSR/ IDEATE

Team Design Journal: IDEATE/MSR

  For this step of the design process, we were focused on ideating different ways to breakdown and approach the design journal. To recap, our original broad HCW statement was: How can we create a design journal that students can use to publish and share their projects? After reflecting on our key insights, and reframing, we narrowed our HCW statement to: How can we teach a reader human-centered design after reading one issue of the journal?  Overall, our two main design goals are to convey the lessons learned during the design process, and to make “DFlAnguage” accessible to the broader … Continue reading Team Design Journal: IDEATE/MSR