___
in the first design unit this year, we learned about “food waste.” I tried to solve my partner’s problem — french fries becoming soggy. In the first few steps of the project, my goal was to “define and inquire.” I asked my partner about “what will make them stopping eating a food.” she gave me some examples to choose from, such as sushi breaking apart, bread becoming too hard, and french fries turning soggy. i decided to make a prototype based on her problem with the french fries.
___
my biggest success in my project this unit is NOT being off-track when creating the prototype. i was most concerned about how the final one will turn out based on my sketch. i created most parts of my prototype based on the plan and was accurate. the layer of separation, shape of the container and the heater (fake) inside the container turned out how it is supposed to be on my planning model. the product that turned out could be identified as “good” when comparing it to when i wanted it to be. i also made this prototype effectively and efficiently. there’s no part of the prototype that i had to re-do it over-and-over again, and i didn’t struggle with most of the parts of creating it. the making process was smooth.
my biggest obstacle in my project is about glueing the bottom part (base) to the cylinder container. it was a mistake for me to not create the base part within a single piece of cardboard. since the cylinder piece of cardboard is intended to stick to the base vertically, with only a thin and little surface attaching to it, so its hard for me to glue it on stably. i tried to use the tape at first, but it turned out not working since the tape could only attach a part of it (it will fall off eventually). so at last, i decided to use the hot glue. it did its job my attaching both pieces of cardboard, but there’s some part around the circle of the cylinder cardboard that didn’t stick on to the base well enough. that will be a thing i will consider more about next time designing.
something i would like to change about my prototype is the separation layer. i originally intended to make a “completely” separated layer, however, since the shape of the container is a circle, i couldn’t make the whole layer be separated without cutting the whole thing. so i decided only to separate a part of it using a rectangular piece of cardboard. a drawback to not fully separating it would be some french fries going under the layer and next to the heater, which will make some fries actually HOT instead of WARM. another thing that ill be willing to change is adding a place to hold ketch-up. this was not really related to the problem my partner’s facing, but i think it will help A LOT if a place to hold ketch-up is added.
one piece of advice I’d give to a future student doing this project would be to make a more specific and sophisticated design of their project. a net design of their project can also be really helpful since then less of the ‘glueing’ process would be needed when constructing the prototype. i’m giving this piece of advice because during the making of this unit I got burnt by the hot glue gun and I wouldn’t want any future student to be exposed to more danger and more chances of what happened to me happening again. Since the net design can allow the student to make one big piece and then fold the net together to make the final prototype, it will be much more safer than cutting out separate pieces and then glueing them together.
overall, I think my prototype was a success because it matched my original plan and didn’t have too much changes to what I originally planned to create. i also made the prototype look as visually appealing as possible in the most efficient way. although no actual functionality is incorporated in the prototype, it models the visual looks and size of what my invention will actually be like to its full extent.
“side view”