Locker Phone Holder

Part 1

We first started developing ideas for our project in November.  We started out by going into fusion and playing around with all of the functions and features to get a feel of how the application works.  Over the next couple of lessons we explored how fusion works, once we were at a point where we felt comfortable with this application we started looking at possible design ideas for our final project.

I liked the idea of doing something that I personally loved so my mind immediately went to animals, with this idea in mind I traced in a dog and cat picture onto my layout in fusion. I didn’t quite feel satisfied with this idea only because It looked a little bit basic in a way, I wanted something more different that could be twisted a little bit and no one would notice. Then I thought of flowers and I loved everything about this idea, even though it’s a pretty common idea flowers can be twisted as well as unique because every flower is different. I then proceeded to trace a flower onto fusion but I quickly realized it wasn’t what I was looking for.  I still liked the idea of doing flowers but I wanted something more detailed so that it wouldn’t look like any other flower. Once I traced this design onto fusion I was confident and I loved everything about it. This exceeded my criteria in every way,  I loved flowers, it wasn’t basic, it was unique, and it had detail. I was very satisfied with my final design.

(playing around with the features and functions)

(my dog and cat design)

(simple flower design)

(final flower design)

Part 2

I am personally not gifted in the technology area, but this design class has really helped develop some of those skills I lack especially on light-burn and fusion. Although I still very well struggled to understand these applications. Some things I found most challenging was how much variety there was to fusion, there are so many buttons which are very intimidating at first but once I found out the techniques for each of them I just stuck to my favorite which I found to help me a lot in the future. I really liked using the curved line option on fusion because you can make any shape you desire with only one click. When I got stuck some strategies I used to help me overcome them was rewatching Ms.Kim’s tutorial videos on DX, these videos were lifesavers whenever I got stuck, because they thoroughly described how everything works on fusion and any little tips and tricks  all while not being too information packed/complicated. Something I learned that helped make my designs look more clean is to take your time and being very zoomed in, this really impacted the preciseness of my lines and made them look more clean and straight.

(a challenge I faced was forgetting to click the flat plane and my whole design was vertical rather than horizontal.)

(some of my favorite tools that I used most often.)

(another challenge I faced was instead of using fusion I messed up and traced all of my fingers rather than just using maker-case.)

(this tool helped to see how long each line was which was very helpful for taking any necessary measurements.)

(these are a couple of tools I found very helpful on light-burn.)

Part 3

Overall I feel very accomplished and excited about the outcome of my design. I think that my performance over online learning could have been better because I wasn’t as productive as I should have been during the course which led to lots of work later on. For any incoming students I would strongly suggest you do whatever you can you stay on track because once you fall behind its very easy to continue t do so rather than picking yourself back up on track. If I would have known to pay very close attention and get everything done as quickly as possible I would have put a much larger effort into the beginning of this course because I feel that I now recognize that I was very unprepared for how fast everything feels. This project was a big challenge for me even from the beginning because I have never been great at tech or designing anything, so I decided to challenge myself. But the biggest challenge for me during this unit was when I traced over my fingers not getting them accurate when I could have just payed closer attention and used maker-case correctly, this could have saved me so much time and because of this slip up I had to restart my project halfway through the course. I feel that for me as a student something I really enjoyed about our first unit was using one-note a lot to jot down all of our ideas and I think that this unit we didn’t use it as much, so i’m some advice I would give to the teacher is to have a little more one-note involved to help organize our notes. Something I really enjoyed this unit is how it didn’t feel so uptight and stressful and from my personal experience this is how I work at my best. I really enjoyed this design semester and I am happy with everything I ended up making.

(my final design prototype)

(my final design)

Sushi Clippers

My partner and I both relate to the same issue when it comes to eating sushi, it falls apart in your chopsticks or fork as you go to
eat it. Our design needs to fit the criteria of practicality, aesthetically pleasing, easy to use, and easily accessible. We desire
something more on the simple side so that you don’t have to think when you go to use it. To make this design we searched deeper
into the problem and brainstormed ideas. The challenge is that the chopsticks are often just too thin so the sushi isn’t
able to balance and will fall off.  A second challenge with chopsticks is that they cannot hold under the sushi so it can just drop out and fall apart. Based on our diagnosis of these problems, we designed several new clipper concepts by iterating and improving the design three times. The main idea is for a clipper that is thicker than chopsticks and can clip underneath the sushi so that it won’t fall apart. Each of our designs feature minor differences. The first one is thicker than normal chopsticks and can clip under sushi, but is made of metal. The second one is also thicker than chopsticks and can clip under the sushi but it is made of silicone so that the grip is stronger than the metal one. The final design is the same as the second clipper but has a feature called “teeth” that allows for a better grip on the sushi relative to the metal clippers.

Feedback from peers:

• How do you eat the sushi when it’s on the clip?
• I like the idea of the sushi clippers because other people had similar problems but yours clipped under, not on top of the sushi.
• I like how you drew 3D.
• Would it be easy to scoop?

When my partner and I originally created our designs for our sushi clippers the designed called for only one material to be used for the clippers – metal – but after the feedback from one of the teachers he asked if there could possibly be more than one material and whether those materials would benefit the overall outcome of our product. With this feedback we decided to change the material of the clippers from metal to silicone to provide better grip onto the sushi making it easier to latch onto. Another feature we decided to add to our design based off more feedback from teachers was the fact that you would just have to balance the sushi if it didn’t have anything securing the sushi from the bottom. To fix this problem we added on “Teeth” to the bottom edge of the clippers for extra support and to make it possible to balance the sushi. The last piece of relevant feedback we received was questions on how to eat the sushi once on the clip and whether it would be easy to scoop. To eat the sushi when its on the clippers you simply un-click the clippers from the top, and then you don’t really scoop the sushi, you clip it up. Overall we integrated most of the feedback received and ended up making changes to our design that I strongly think benefited our design.

This picture is before we received feedback and made changes

This picture is the final product after all of our feedback and all of our changes.

Our design has a variety of pros and fewer cons. The strengths in our design include clips under the sushi for a better
grip rather than having to use chopsticks to hold the sushi and it falling beneath the chopsticks and coming apart. Another strength of our design is that picking up the sushi won’t take the time and concentration that it usually does with chopsticks. One final strength of our design is that the sushi can have a more smooth and practical travel pathway to the mouth. Normally, when you eat sushi it often ends up being very unbalanced and takes way too long to eat one piece. But with this new product it will make it more simple, smoother, and won’t take long at all (around 3 seconds).

The weakness with this design is the possibility that when unclipping from the sushi the clippers may get stuck because the teeth may catch on one another. This possible outcome is unlikely. The materials we used to make this design was silicone and some sort of wire or toothpick to be the base shape of the clippers so that it doesn’t just flop apart. Sushi clippers can help satisfy any sushi lover who wants to avoid wasting their sushi crumbling apart a table. If you want to eat your sushi in 3 seconds or less, have control over each and every piece, avoid  worrying about the sushi coming apart, and in general, enjoy a better sushi eating experience then these sushi clippers are the perfect match for you!