5 hour design challenge
Exploring Creativity 23.09
We met in the schools large auditorium today, quickly learning the first lesson of the day: why get a small room when you can get a big one… Each student had to write down a single word on a post-it note and hand it over to Einar (our course teacher, for those of you who still might not know). We were divided into groups of four and each group was given four randomly chosen words. My group was Erik from the same studio course as myself and two girls, Therese and Li, both doing architecture. We were then given a “5 hour design challenge”, the challenge being conjuring up a product based only on our four words and presenting it to the rest of the course….in 5 hours. Our group was given the following words, with some dictionary meanings in parenthesis:
-Elegant (graceful, tasteful, dignified, great design)
-Celestial (angelic, blissful, ethereal, seraph)
-Gadgets (A thing working, functional, mechanical)
-Innovative (profit, something new)
We began our creative process by quickly brainstorming a little bit around the four words, just throwing out our own thoughts, descriptions, ideas and interpretations which we would use as a basis for the rest of our process. The words we ended up with were:
Change, waves, creativity, new, wine, dynamic, reflection, movement, food, mirror, ice, surreal, function, nature, snow, cloud, water, peace, floating, long limbs, dancing, shadow, dreaming, light, sleep, flying, glass, ballet, music, white, life, birds, wind
These words really helped us mentally process and visualize several ideas. At this point we decided to use the “6-3-5” method. We individually wrote down three ideas each on separate pieces of paper. The ideas could be anything, more or less, but preferably some kind of product. After writing down each our ideas we passed them around the table to the other group members, who then had to continue building upon the previous idea(s) already written on the paper. It was a really fun way to work, and allowed us to truly open up our minds and throw some crazy stuff out there. We were generally surprised at how much stuff we were able to produce in a really short period of time using this method, really effective. So here is the long list of stuff we came up with. The capital letters of course indicates who wrote what down. T is Therese, L is Li, E is Erik, and B is naturally Bilal (me…).
1:
T (start): A spatial element which reflects light & shadow
B: A moving membrane of varying shape/color/texture and/or a shelter/protection/cover reflecting the atmosphere/weather through light & shadow
L: A cloth material. When people put it on it loses its own color and reflects light & shadow from its surroundings
E: The cloth reacts to other clothing, your movement, your mood and stress level, as well as the surroundings. Giving the effect that if you are still and relaxed you are a chameleon, blending in with the surroundings. The moment you are approached, move or stressed, colors flare!
2:
L (start): A chair, soft like clouds that can change shape by people’s movements
E: Changes characteristics throughout the day. Soft/hard, moving/dead, shaking/soft waves. Keeps you on your toes/relaxing!
T: Placed in different rooms, areas and situations
B: Senses and reacts to changes in a person’s mind\body. Stress, tension, frustration etc. Shapes itself accordingly
3:
B (start): An “improve-your-life” box (just add water)
L: Without any suggestions: “no advice”. When you need power, it gives you power. When you need sleep, it gives you sleep…
E: A personal guru. Uses a mixture of modern medicine, ancient monk meditation, exercise and chinese zen-teachings to advise you through your everyday life. Feed it information and it will give you advice
T: It is a genie which grants you three wishes
4:
T (start): A person talking, making noise/sound (can be recorded). Maybe the sound breaks the glass. Maybe the sound separates shadow from light
B (start): A glass wall acting as a screen, capturing sound. Various sounds/noises produce different visual elements on the screen, illuminating a space/spatial environment
L: You can touch the wall and feel the sound and the light
E: Touching the patterns on the wall triggers playback of the recorded sound, only manipulated according to how you touch it. This way the wall becomes an interactive plaything as well as an ambient device
5:
T (start): A dynamic wallpaper that displays floating patterns of relaxing colors, skies and water-ish animations
E: The wallpaper has been placed and worked with in nature. It’s been out in the rain, in rivers, mud, sun, thunder etc. These elements create its patterns
B: “Smart” memory material that “remembers” its previous and newest/most recent surroundings. Based on this, expresses “feelings” and emotion through its display, almost like a living entity
L: It will also record it if you have done something bad for instance at your home or in your garden, like a bad memory. It needs you to create/use a new nice memory to cover it
6:
B (start): A glass water bottle reflecting your surroundings. Cleans dirty water into drinkable. Changes shape/color accordingly (comment from T: filter “cleaning” the water inside the bottle)
L: It can tell you if you should drink it. Tells you if it’s good for you or not (comment from T: The label on the bottle gives you the information)
E: Healthy drink: the bottle feels cool and soft. Turns blue. Not healthy drink: the bottle feels hot and stings your fingers. Turns black, spills fluid, falls over, insults you, cap won’t come off, smells bad (comment from T: a bottle for field trips, study trips etc.)
T: You can pour water in the bottle anywhere, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, fountains etc. The bottle tells you whether to drink it or not.
7:
L (start): A cup which gives people different images when they have different fluids inside.
E: Water: blue skies, waterfalls, forests. Limonade: orange trees, fruits, colors. Soda: sparkling, sugar farms (reminds you its not healthy!) Beer: sunshine. Drink: beaches, fireworks
T: It’s both: the “image” from the liquid in the cup is the effect you as a person get from drinking it. Beer: drunk. Drink: happy. Juice: energetic. Can be shown as a diagram
B: Also visually shows “how much” you have had of the particular effect. “Uh oh, you’re getting really drunk!” or “enough soda for the kids, or they won’t sleep tonight!”
8:
L (start): A dream machine which creates different dreams
E: An audio/video/light system you can set to different “dream modes”, creating sound and colored light to stimulate different types of sleep and dreams. Wakes you up at 4 in the morning so you can remember it!
T: A machine that records when you are in deep sleep and how your mind works when you’re sleeping
B: Remembers your dreams over time and behaves/changes accordingly to improve sleep and foster positive dreams in the future
9:
B (start): A dream-box. Records you dreams and plays them over as audio/visual soundscapes
L: You can improve the dreams. Place yourself in a new role (like for instance 007) and replay the dream again in your dream. The database includes thousands of different roles you can choose from, or you can even choose the story.
E: A wake-up-box. The box analyses the patterns in your brain while you sleep and provides fitting music to wake up to. For example: You sleep well and your brain is relaxed. The box sees this and wakes you up playing “Morgenstemning” (Grieg) –or- you dream nightmares, trashing about in your sleep. The machine wakes you with death metal!
T: It does not only record dreams, it also records sleepwalking and talking. This creates a film/art image presented from a “projector” on your bedroom wall. It also contains music as mentioned above. This is something you will wake up to.
10:
E (start): A flying indoor balloon with lights inside, responds to music. The lights change colors, rhythm and intensity. The balloon flies around in changing altitudes, patterns and speed. Get 20 for parties!
T: The intensity, rhythm and speed of the balloon leaves a pattern in the air which again creates an existing “dreamy” room. It can be laser, wires or colored lights
B: Captures sound and reacts to it, by itself playing ambient/subtle sounds/music adding to the existing atmosphere and intensifying it
L: It will change shapes and the material. It can also reflect its surroundings and play videos.
11:
T (start): A dancing element which moves along with the sound of music.
B: A flexible plant/tree reacting to its surroundings, moving with sound (growing)
L: It reacts to your mood
E: A mechanical plant with moving limbs. Creates patterns and movement according to surroundings or presets. Can be set to dance, sleep etc. –or- a device you hook onto your actual plants, making them move. Also waters them.
12:
E (start): A desktop (computer) that “grows” and changes by how you treat it
T: Like food – what happens when you leave food out of the fridge for a long time?
B: Very subtly responds to the treatment it is given. Colors, themes, the sounds it produces etc. vary and change slightly to reflect its feelings.
L: You can give it a “beginning stage”. You can teach it different things and it will learn.
S of the ideas were actually somewhat similar, kind of interesting. We joined a few of them together, sort of categorized them and decided to quickly use the “6 thinking hats” method to look at them from different perspectives. We were however running out of time and wanted to quickly choose one of the ideas for further work, and so we voted. We chose to continue with the illuminated, flying indoor ballon…
The “Air-Ballon” incorporates several nifty and fun features. It is first and foremost a light source, a lamp if you want. It kind of hovers/flies around your apartment and follows you where you need light. It also reacts to its surroundings, for instance to music. It can change light color and intensity according to the music, and bounce around to the rhythm. You can start out by buying one single Air-Ballon, and then expand your “collection” by buying and adding on more ballons of different sizes later. When several are present they will group together in a single or several clusters and move around together. When not in use they will all meet at a sort of docking station in the ceiling to be recharged, and simultaneously act as a single ceiling lamp.
We now had less than an hour to illustrate our product idea in photshop, which is really not much time to photoshop anything at all. The result didn’t turn out too bad anyway and the Air-Balloon was well received at the end of the day, when we presented it to the rest of the course. Some questioned its plausibility though, but like Einar said: “when someone starts asking technical questions, it’s usually a good thing/sign”.
