Type I Journal Exercises

Date	Journal Exercise
Note that these are NOT due dates. In fact, the journal exercises are not to be performed prior to the class meeting on the date listed.
January 6th	Regarding the in-class brainstorming activity... What was your team's final design? What early concept did you have that was left behind? Why did you abandon it? What feature of your final design are you most proud of? Why are you proud of this feature? What feature did you least like? Why?
January 8th	What was your favorite toy as a child? Why? At what age did you stop playing with toys (in the classic sense)? Do you still play now? In what sense/how? Find the picture of a toy that intrigues you and include it in your journal. Why does it intrigue you?
January 10th	What is design? What is the last thing you designed? Set aside the next page in your journal for a pet peeves list. Put at least five entries on the list. Periodically return to this list during the semester to add pet peeves. Put a date next to each peeve when you add it.
January 12th	Cite three things about design stated by Petroski that you find intriguing. Why? What part of the Newsweek article most pushes your notion of design? What about your living space, architectually, is well designed? What isn't? What practice by IDEO surpised you? Why?
January 13th	Practice drawing the basic shapes (Cube, Cylinder, Cone, Sphere) and shading them. Pay attention to line weight and how it can bring a shape off the page. Work on developing your drawings quickly. Do not worry about correcting bad drawings, rather, start new ones and try to make improvements. After you have several of each shape drawn, circle the ones that you like the best and then try to imitate these sketches. Also, practice drawing circles on the faces of cubes utilizing the bisectors of the sides of the cube.
January 15th	Read the Instructions in the sketching handout for the upside down drawing exercises and complete both pictures accordingly. Turn them right-side up when you are finished and compare them to what you were copying to see how you did. Are you surprised at your own work?
January 18th	Describe & sketch your final design from today's activity. What "wild ideas" did your group come up with? As for quantity, how many "different" ideas did you (your group) come up with? Provide a short description of each. What brainstorming rule did you find your team violated most frequently? What would have helped you to better follow it? Now consider the designs of the other teams... Which design, other than your own, was best according to the conditions in the exercise? Which was worst? Justify your best and worst choices.
January 20th	Select three items lying around your house and compose drawings of them from the basic forms. Draw the basic forms in lightly and then darken the actual lines of the object that is drawn. Experiment with line-weight and simple (minimal) shading. Draw your construction lines light and extend them past intersections. Be careful to note relationships between dimensions. Go over the actual lines of the object and darken them. Do not erase construction lines on any of the drawings.
January 22nd	Select an item (chair, hand mixer, plant, etc), set it against a plain background and compose a negative space drawing of it. Try hard to focus only on the negative spaces and not the object as a whole. Before you start, select a basic unit on your object for sighting relationships.
January 25th	Recall the first sketching activity of drawing your left hand. You are now to repeat this activity. Position your left hand comfortably, in an intriguing pose. Sketch it to the best of your ability.
January 27th	Print out and tape into your journal the first 3D model composed in IDEAS that you are proud of. This is NOT to be your rubber novelty.
January 29th	Design an object/toy that utilizes the rubbery properties of the rapid prototyping material that fits the additional design constraints posed in the assignment. Sketch out ideas for rubbery toy. Do not wait until a final thought is decided upon. Sketch the first idea that comes to mind and continue to evolve your design as more ideas come to mind in your drawings. Your sketch should reflect the constraints of working with the rapid prototyping machine but not the constraints of your abilities in IDEAS.
February 1st	During/Following our visit to Toys R Us... Find a different example of one toy for each of the following (NOT mentioned by DelVecchio): Master, Creator, Emulator, Friend, Plaything in Everything. Provide a one line description of why the toy in question creates in a child this transformative property. Find two examples of highly regenerative toys. Explain why your choices are regenerative. Find two toys that align with current historical or social trends (video game, television and movie tie-ins are excluded). Explain the historical or social trend with which they align. Which toy had the best packaging for reasons other than its “look”? What was so interesting about the packaging? What toy did you discover today? Sketch it. Explain why it excites you.
February 3rd	NO JOURNAL ACTIVITY - You need a break! Just a thought though... should you change/update/modify your rubber novelty idea?
February 5th	Print out and tape into your journal your geometric model of your rubber novelty.
February 8th	Which brainstorming roadblocks did you not realize existed for you until this lecture? Explain. Which brainstorming roadblocks have you encountered prior to this class? What was the situation? Which brainstorming roadblocks have you encountered in this class? What was the situation? What are the benefits to being conscious of these roadblocks when you are trying to be creative?
February 10th	Regarding the second iteration of the in-class brainstorming activity... What was different in the process your team followed this time? Did you find that your team was better at brainstorming? What roadblocks did your team encounter? How did you work around them? Did you find it easier to follow the brainstorming rules this time? Which ones did your team violate the most? Did you find your team's process for generating ideas was better this time? Did you generate more ideas? Did you like what your team came up with this time more than last time you did this activity? What other team's design did you dislike? Why? What other team's design did you like? Why? Overall, were the final designs of "higher quality"?
February 12th	Consider the use of sketching and geometric modeling during design. Compare and contrast the two. For example, in what context should you use one instead of the other? Why? Which allows you to be more creative? Why? Given that you've done a nice job, Which are you more proud of when you are finished? Why? Which causes more frustration? Why? Which requires more practice? Why?
February 15th	Journals due - No scheduled activity
The second set of journal questions begins here. Note that all entries for our consideration should follow the "-END I-" note in your journal.
February 22nd	Propose a journal activity for the rest of the class associated with design or thinking outside the box. Present your idea to someone else in class. Who was it and What were their comments? Change your activity in light of the criticism you received.
February 23rd	Return to the main iDesign site. Follow the three links to view the journal entry samples. Read these samples. Reflect on three of the type 1 examples, three of the type 3 examples, and the flexible novelty processes. Compare these entries to your own.
February 24th	We now have several ideas for mechanical toys. Which three are your favorites and why? Which ones, do you believe, have the most market appeal? Try to conceive of a mechanism that solves one of the challenges presented by the toy. What are the problems with your mechanism? Now conceive of a different mechanism to solve the same problem.
February 26th	Design a jumpsuit. Be sure that your jumpsuit can hold everything you need for the day in it. Make sure your jumpsuit is stylish and unisex. Make sure your jumpsuit has features that make it readily customizable to an individual's tastes without significant effort.
March 1st	First, broadly reflect on the trip to Bangzoom design. Write 100 or 200 words about the trip. After this, answer the following questions. What did you find to be the most intriguing aspect of Bangzoom design? What surprised you about their company? What surprised you about their process? Imagine you are starting your own toy design company, what kind of toys would you design?
March 3rd	Recall the lecture in class today on user-centered design. For each of the seven principles (1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head, 2. Simplify the structure of tasks, 3. Make things visible: bridge the gulfs of Execution and Evaluation, 4. Get the mappings right, 5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and artificial, 6. Design for error, 7. When all else fails, standardize) for transforming difficult tasks into simple ones, find one design that either exemplifies the principle or violates it. You must have a simple drawing or an attached picture for each one of your examples and a short description of why the design obeys or violates the principle. Do not use examples or pictures from The Bad Human Factors Designs website, though you are strongly encouraged to look there for inspiration.
March 5th	First, read this article. Briefly summarize the article. Imagine a new target audience for whom you would like to introduce "toys." Clearly define your audience. Like the dolls for the elderly in the article, conceive of a toy for this target audience that has appeal to the target audience AND appeals to people in general as being a toy. Explain why your toy succeeds with the target audience and appeals to a general audience as being a toy.
March 8th	Prior to starting this journal exercise, review the shmock-ups here. Compose an email to Drew containing three items. First, write a 100 (or so) word description of your shmock-up. Describe it so that someone looking at the picture will know what they are looking at. Second, (excluding your own shmock-up) identify the three shmock-ups you liked best and why. Your answer to the question why should include a form and function concern for the shmock-ups you like. Finally, identify the three shmock-ups you liked least and why. Again, your answer to the question why should include a form and function concern for the shmock-ups you dislike. After sending the email to drew, print out this email and tape it into your journal.
March 10th	This one should strike you as familiar: What is design? How has your answer to this question changed from the beginning of the semester?
March 11th	Do you ever take the time to design a (term or research) paper? Or, do you just start to write and see what spills out of your head? What does it mean to design a paper? Should you take the time to design it? Will you in the future?
March 12th	Reconsider your pet peeves list. Add several more pet peeves. Now design a solution to one of your pet peeves. You don't have to use one of your recently added pet peeves, just clearly identify which peeve you are addressing.
The third set of journal questions begins here. Note that all entries for our consideration should follow the "-END II-" note in your journal. There will be significantly fewer Type I entries for the remainder of the semester. As always, you are encouraged to add Type III entries and need to have Type II entries.
March 29th	Prior to starting this journal exercise, review the shmock-ups here. Compose an email as a team to Drew containing two items. First, write a 150+ word description of your team's shmock-up. Describe it so that someone looking at the picture will know what they are looking at. Second, (excluding your own shmock-up) identify which two teams have the best start on their toy. Identify why these two teams are off to the best start. Your answer to the question why should include a form and function concern. After sending the email to drew, each member of the team should print out the email and tape it into his or her journal.
April 2nd	Recall the lab sessions of this past week. Do you feel that this was a useful exercise? Why? Do you now feel more confident in your ability to prototype simple mechanisms? Make suggestions for how we could make this lab a better learning experience by keeping it as a two-day learning experience. Make suggestions for how we could make this lab a better learning experience by making it longer than a two-day learning experience. Should it be more than two days? Make several suggestions for how you could improve the design of the device that you built in lab.
April 5th	Considering the lecture on normative development today, how did your instincts compare to what you learned? Which developmental stage was your group the furthest from? How much exposure to kids under 8 do you currently have? Do you think it is important for a toy designer to have a sense of these developmental stages? Why or why not? Where does this activity fit into the inventive design process?
April 7th	After reading the section from Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser distributed last week, answer the following questions. What are the potential harmful effects of advertising directly to children? How significant is your level of concern about each effect? What types of products would raise more ethical concerns for you and which do you feel more or less comfortable advertising to children? What methods of advertising described in the article were more or less ethically concerning to you?
April 12th	The main iDesign site now features a "Team Projects: Winter 2005" section. Visit the site for your team. First, generate a title for your toy. The title can be newly selected based on recent discussions/plans for your toy. Then compose, as a team, a 150+ word entry to follow the "Prototype 2" heading. Please include the following: a description of what we are looking at, the challenges you have identified, and what you plan to accomplish (that is, what we are going to see under the "Prototype 3 - Final Prototype" section when added!). Email your description to Drew. Print this email out and include it in your journal.
April 15th	What aspect of your toy do you feel the least confident in? How will you fix it?
April 18th	What is the ideal aesthetic of your toy? Sketch it.
April 24th	How has your project evolved from the initial concept?
April 28th	This is the last Type I journal exercise! Offer us specific feedback on this course. Basically, I want to know what have you learned in this class? Be as specific as possible. In your opinion, is it a hard or easy class to take? In your opinion, is it hard or easy to orchestrate/teach? Justify your opinions. If you are concerned with "speaking the truth" to us, I understand. Of course, I still need that feedback at some point. Offer what you want, positive or negative. A lack of constructive criticism in your feedback will be noted. If you want to speak very negatively about the class and are nervous to do so in this format, you can use course evaluations, send Tim or me an email after you have received your grade, or put an anonymous note in my box.