Ideation Sprint
Process
In this sprint we introduced the process of ideation into our repertoire of design skills. We conducted a few short sketch exercises that challenged our fast-paced idea making and ability to quickly represent ideas through drawing. The first exercise was to create ten sketches of anything relating to vacations in ten minutes. After experiencing first-hand the difficulties of a seemingly easy task we learned how constraining a broad topic can actually make it easier to come up with ideas. Next, we did a 10+10 activity which involved making ten sketches related to trash within ten minutes, and then picking one of the sketches and sketching ten variations of it in ten minutes. This activity helped us prepare for our project of the week, a 10+10 activity about cooking in high-fidelity. My approach for the project was to constrain the topic to ideas that made cooking, prep, or cleaning in the kitchen easier. I then chose a design of a self-cleaning pan to expand and make variations of.
Reflection
This project challenged me much more than I anticipated. During class I was unable to achieve the goal amount of sketches in any of the exercises. During the trash 10+10 activity I chose to make variations on my sketch of shooting a trash like a basketball. At first, I was completely stuck on how I could make variations of such a specific idea, but once I changed my constraint to “games involving trash” I was able to come up with more ideas than any of the previous exercises. During the cooking project I had a relatively easy time coming up with the ten initial sketches, but the ten variation sketches left me stumped for quite awhile. I eventually had to settle on variation sketches that I was not satisfied with because I could no longer come up with quality ideas. If I did the project again I would definitely think longer about what design idea I wanted to make variations of and make sure I had enough variation ideas before I start sketching.
Questions
Q: How did you chose your “most promising” sketch? Which variables did you consider?
A: I chose the most prominent sketch by looking objectively at my sketches and asking myself which one had the highest probability of working in the real world. I chose the heat/fire self-cleaning pan because the cleaning method is proven in ovens already, and all the technology needed to make such a device currently exists. Some other factors I considered were simpleness of design and how users would react to the design.