Julia

Give an overview of your design process, sharing the product & your learning. 

• During the past few classes, we built a product that shows an energy conversion. I chose to work in pairs because I thought this would be much easier than working alone. My partner and I decided to build a “catapult,” but we added some changes from the initial design made from popsicle sticks. We created this final “historical catapult” product through challenges and learning. The audience for this catapult will be children around the age of 7-12 who will be interested will weapons, cars, and maybe historical stuff. This product will be displayed in an ancient history museum and the military weapons and tools section. 
• During this lesson, there were many things I learned. The first thing was making communicating between myself and my partner. The reason was that during this project, there were a few times when I misunderstood my partner’s idea, and I made a few mistakes. This might have caused a little trouble, but ultimately, I tried my best to make it the way my partner wanted. This shows that having clear communication and well-understanding is essential when doing a teamwork-based project. Another point I have learned is that during the design process, the first step will be planning and making sketches of what we will do, but sometimes, the final product will differ from our plans.
• For example, my partner and I sketched out our final product and had all the measurements well-written on the document. However, it needed to be more on track when we started to create our final product. We had to change the whole sketch because we had to make something different from the youtube video we studied. We had to change the measurement because the product would look different from the original one. Also, we had to change the material we were planning to use because we realized that this product’s frame needed to be strong enough to hold the power of the arm when it was being pressed. This shows that planning for exact things can change during making and building. 

Use the rubric & your success criteria to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the product. 

• The product’s strength is its different kinds of energy conversion. In this product, we can see potential, gravitational, kinetic, and elastic energy. The whole point of this design project was to show and able to teach about energy conversion, and with the catapult, a lot of different types of energy can be delivered. The audience for this product will be children who visit the ancient history museum, so the primary influence on them will be giving them images about how it might look like in the past with few changes being made. Currently, there aren’t many images shown to children about how the catapult seems unless they make one using popsicle sticks. This means the impact the audiences will be showing and letting them learn about a catapult, its use, and how it functions. I had put this part as a strength of the product because, through this display, they can play with their hands and see how the catapult looks and works. 
• The product’s weakness is that we used eco-friendly materials, and the catapult is not that strong enough, different from what we had thought about. When we returned from the long weekend, we found out that the hot glue gun was not the best material to stick parts together because, after a while, the pieces had fallen apart, and we had to use clips to put them together. If we were some of those professional people who create and build this kind of toy, then I believe they would use some type of wood glue or glue that professional people use. However, since we did not have enough time and did not think about those types of cement, we used the simplest glue we could find from the design lab.

Explain how and why your toy/device meets the design specifications.

• The design specifications we had for our design were the different types of energy conversion and also the success criteria. How our product meets this point is during the process of making and building the product, my partner and I had a lot of communications and ideas sharing towards what our next step will be. Through this, there were parts where we changed, improved, and there were parts where we combined ideas. The other two success criteria were about the catapult being able to move and shoot far enough. However, since we did not use strong materials to put the pieces together, in the end, they fell apart. This had a lack of interest from the audience because they knew this point and did not use much power when pressing down the arm’s stick. The product did meet our criteria which was able to shoot, but if we use too much pressure on it when pressing the arm stick down and letting it go, there are more possibility that the stick will break. In this case, the audience or the user need to be aware of the fact that the stick might break, so they need to use less pressure when playing with this toy. With the wheels, we didn’t have enough time for it, so we used cardboard instead. This was a big mistake because the cardboard required strength to hold the catapult. Although it was a bit too weak, it could still move back and forth. 

Other reflections: What are you most proud of? What was most challenging? 

• I am proud that in a short period, my partner and I came up with this product and did our best to reach the end. Creating this whole product will be hard if I do it alone. The proudest part of this process is our collaboration. We had a lot of sharing and learning time, we had much communication, and we met many challenges together. However, none of us had a negative attitude toward the project, and we both showed respect toward each other. 
• One of the challenges was with time management. We had about four classes for this project, but we also needed the teacher’s approval for our planning. We had to sketch and develop creative ideas that differed from the original catapult. This means that we had about three classes to build the whole catapult. We were a little in a rush, and the part with hot gluing did not go pretty. Also, the cutting wheels process was a bit rough. We did this at every last class with the project, so the circles weren’t perfectly even with each other.