Creating our Base

When it comes to building a house, it is always important to make the base
stable. This metaphor extends to the design process as well. Before
implementing our own designs, we first need to confirm that our problem
space is logical and agreeable. In our Cogs 198 meeting, we had another
critique day with our classmates. This week, our team tried to come up
with several different ways of ‘reusing’ newspaper waste. During our
brainstorm, we found out that there might be lots of student organizations
on campus that may have needs for newspapers. So we made a list of
possible student organizations and started contacting them, including the
Guardian itself.

We also had another meeting on Friday to prepare our pitch presentation.
The presentation was for Saturday’s IDEO workshop with Nastasha, but it
proved to be a very good chance for us to reorganize our thoughts, and
prioritize what we’ve done so far. Throughout the meeting, we found out
there were several weaknesses in our design decision process and modified
them by taking a broader look at the problem. For instance, we were able
to have a wider perspective on the waste process and decided to think
about the ‘reduce-reuse-recycle’ concept as a whole.

On Saturday, we had the opportunity to sit down with Nastasha for a one on
one discussion. She provided us with a lot of resources, which focused on
design in a reusable context. One of the ideas that she emphasized was
repurposing the newspapers to beautify campus. She suggested things like
papier-mâché chairs and statues. Speaking with her pushed us to continue
thinking about creative design opportunities that could help us solve our
problem.

If you are interested in what we are working on right now, check out the
link below:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1xswlBiiGBzpBLYml2YCm_sAI6aDVpnXIvBczj4tyj1s/edit?usp=sharing