Give an overview of your design process, sharing the product & your learning
First I determined what I wanted my product to be, and found some precedents to base my design off of and aspects from those precedents that I could add onto my own model to make it unique and interesting. Then I started planning out the general idea of the product and figured out ways to incorporate the parts from the precedents that I thought would make it interesting.
Use the rubric & your own success criteria to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the product.
Some strengths of the product is that it’s relatively cheap and easy to make, so it’s affordable to people who may have a tighter budget. It’s mechanisms are visible, the client is able to see how it works which may help them understand energy conversion more.
Some weaknesses of the product is that it’s not all that environmentally friendly when considering the amount of hot glue used. As it is made out of relatively weak materials, it can also break quite easily, especially in the hands of children, who are usually not as careful with objects as is necessary when handling certain things.
Explain how and why your toy/device meets the design specifications.
It effectively shows energy conversion, specifically the conversion of potential energy to kinetic energy, while also engaging the client in the sense of it’s fun to use and can be customizable to further engage the user and encourage creativity. As the design allows for visible viewing of the inner workings, it can help a child understand how energy conversion may work, or at least how it works in the specific situation shown in the product.
Other reflections: What are you most proud of? What was most challenging?
Personally, I’m most proud of the main body of the boat, as it turned out better than I thought it would, looking like the general shape of a boat instead of a pile of parts. Maybe I just had really slow standards.
One of the most challenging parts of this project personally was communication between me and the partner I had for this project. As I was originally planning on soloing this project, I didn’t really know how to communicate what I wanted to do with certain parts that I had yet to plan out fully, such as the wheels and the length of the Popsicle sticks at the front of the boat which were too short and had to be filled in with a lot of hot glue.