The title of my project would be “Expression in Focus for Environment”.

The societal/cultural issue I want to explore with my photographs is identity and self-expression. I want to draw attention to how people behave in various settings and how body language, facial expressions, and the environment may all express feelings or personality traits.

I want my audience to feel a sense of connection with the subjects and perhaps the environments, too, in my portraits. I hope that by focusing on emotions and narrative, viewers will consider how appearances could represent deeper ideas, emotions, and experiences.

By searching for images that combine lighting, composition, and backgrounds to highlight the subject’s personality or narrative, I will get inspiration and refine my concepts. My technique will be influenced by photographers such as Steve McCurry and Yousuf Karsh, particularly their use of eye contact, dramatic lighting, and important situations.

 

“When I first saw the picture of the made LED lamp, I was amazed. I thought it looked really cool and new. It got light bulbs in and seems can DIY the shapes of the outside. So I chose it and gave up the other phone holder choice.” It was online classes for us then, so we couldn’t do both. I can’t promise but I predict you will be able to try the two of them. 

(PS: This is my third time writing a blog, and I hope I can help you.)

Starting

Our designing app, Fusion 360, was, sometimes really really tricky for me. Early before the project, I basically could only draw some random circles, and easy rectangles, or, make a symbol using them. Soon I learned some new techniques and tools, in Fusion and applied them to some small figures:

One bull head using the “mirror” tool.

A star, I guess, still with the mirror tool.

For this turtle, I tried using more complicated tools. For this one, I included the circle, mirror, and one called “Circular Pattern”, which is kind of complex to use but very effective. The turtle’s ‘legs’ are made of that.

LED Lamp

Another normal day for me. But not normal when I got to my PD classroom. There’s a poll for us. Choosing between a phone holder sticking on the locker we tried to do on campus and a LED lamp that seems really cool. I was thinking about just the beginning part of this blog.

Our teacher, Miss Kim, soon announced the instructions to us. We’d divide up into 2 groups depending on what we chose. We will first need to analyze and gather ideas for what it should look like and what should we design on it. and soon, our first part of designing begins; making finger joints.

(My essential idea of a finger joint)

Fun Part

In the beginning part of December, new information came to us. The following process should be inserting pictures and ‘tracing’ them, meaning creating & inserting lines in the outside of the symbols we want on the image. So we will be able to cut it out on the lamps. I mean, it is a little frustrating at first. And I’m sure everyone will be confused, especially me in online classes.

Bottlenecks

“Wasn’t that easy for me,” I often tell myself when I’m working. I didn’t have a hard time finding pictures to trace but deciding what, to trace. I did many versions, at least 10. Finally, I finished. I saved myself from the “borderline of loss.”

Finished sketch.

Advice for LightBurn

On January 4, Miss Kim announced LightBurn, an app I downloaded a long time ago.

What it looks like, remember to download from Self-Service.

We now finally know that this is the last gate until laser cutting, well, I somehow predicted before already. Never mind, let’s go back to the instructions that include experiences after 2 times big corrections, 4 small corrections, and several times looking/checking.

• Don’t change the size of the design for the first time using LightBurn
• Look and memorize the colors for your sketch, really important.
• Outside of the lamp, has to be red:

Example.

Also, The hole (for my 3rd square, one black hole, and two tiny red holes) needs to be carefully made.

Correct, correct, correct

My first submission for my LightBurn file got some problems, and I promise you also will unless you’re an expert at LightBurn. My 3 photos above, they’re all refined so can be referred to if want. My biggest problem was my face (2nd square for this picture) because it’s really hard to construct and sort. The detail inside the face is hard to do, so I recommend not choosing these kinds of faces. I resubmitted, and finally, the prototype came out. It will be in cardboard and only the final product will be in wood.

Analyzation

The next step for us is to analyze our prototypes, from Mr. Diego’s help, I realized that I need a small hole for the cord in one of my sides, and has to make it bigger. I did about 16^3. I think this size is big enough to fit so you can also make it. (PS: You can use some math in LightBurn just as I did if you don’t want to go back to fusion. Only works on changing sizes: if you want 16cm like me, you can do 16*2 which is 32, and time it by 10 because it’s in mm.)

It’s the width, not the height. Which isn’t 360 accurate because there’s a blank space between the two panels

You should remove the bottom line of the square (the one that overlaps the finger), but you can not to.

Conclusion

When I first saw the picture of the made LED lamp, I was amazed. I thought it looked really cool and new. It got light bulbs in and seems can DIY the shapes of the outside.

January 18, my final wood lamp is out. It didn’t disappoint me. On Oct 17, the project started, experienced 3 months of great designing time, had become one of my favorite works in ISB, and I hope you, can experience the same joys and happiness in Product Design.

Light bulbs aren’t out yet, but I can tell it’s color-changing!

(Final PS: I heard that Miss Kim will be starting this project at the beginning of the course, so, good for you!)

Part 1: Divergent Ideas

Our ideas of brainstorming the utensils are actually coming from our brains directly. When we have an idea, we share it with each other. We draw it on the sheet if we think it’s acceptable and appropriate. But if we have ideas that are not so good, we decide if we want to improve our thinking more, which creates a new design; or we just give up the design. We discuss a lot when we decide if a design is good or not. This helps us come up with 10 different ideas that will help on eating food better.

Part 2: Feedback&Refinement

We have received a variety of post-its that includes both positive and negative feedback, and the most wishing feedbacks are the hoping for a neater look, which needs improvement on handwriting, drawing, and space usage. So, in parts 4 and 6, we’ve improved a lot on the drawing/writing and also organizing the space. Here are the 2 pictures of the drawing before the feedback and the drawing after the feedback.

Before:

After:

The 2nd picture is definitely clearer and neater than the 1st picture. I can tell that feedback is very important and impacts us to improve in a good way.

Also, since there is no feedback on changing/improving the design of the straw, we came up with an improvement of changing the two-people straw to single person straw, because we think this two-people straw is not so useful. If we change it to a single-person version, it doesn’t require several people to be able to use the straw, but any person can use it.

Improvement:

Part 3: Reflect&Share

The strength of this utensil is that it can be shortened/lengthened, which helps the user by drinking the beverage without wanting to move. The weakness of this utensil is that it might be dirty to use if your hand is not clean. The materials we need in rather make this are plastic and rubber bands.

In those pictures I took, you can see our cardboard arcade that was made: the basketball hoop shooting game.

This game was played with a ball, a shooter and some hoops. You goal is to shoot the balls into the hoops to get points by using the ball-shooter, just like the picture above. There are easy ones, which you will get lower points by shooting in. And of course, there are harder ones that when you shoot in you will get higher points than the easy ones. There also includes cool features such as double-pointer and a 500pt box. That means when you throw into the box you will get 500 points immediately. Come and try if you want!

Here are some things that I would like to change.

Firstly, I would measure the cardboards more precisely and so we will find out easier when we are attaching the cardboard pieces to the main arcade. That will be more beautiful and also, more playable.

Secondly, I would change the point system lower so that it might be more sense for the target than the high points and even HIGHER targets we want to challenge. So that more students will come and play our game.

Lastly, I would want to make the arcade bigger and so it will be more interesting and also, more people will come and play our games.

My biggest obstacle of this arcade was making the ball-shooter, because it need to have a lot of  small cardboard pieces and you have to make a hole in it. It took us 4-5 classes to finish the shooter. Another part of the shooter is the small connecting wood bar. We have to cut it from a long wood bar. And we have use all we had(knife, scissors, mats etc.) and we finally made it after two class. This game need to be easier, I think.

Overall, I think this arcade was successful because it works the best statut of all of the tests we had, and a lot of 4th graders had came to our’s and played. I would love to make another one next time, and of course I’m going to choose Design at 7th grade.