Week 3
Our team burned through a big list of ToDos this week just before our (very early) week long break. We came up with preliminary versions of our hunt statement, budget, and schedule, decided upon the direction of our logo, did some preliminary background research, and met with our advisers to discuss and revise some of the things we did this week.
Hunt Statement
Hunt statement here refers to something like the stated goal of our project. We worked toward creating this by answering a number of subquestions about who it is for, what it is, and how it will be different from similar works. It was difficult for us to make a focused and specific hunt statement since we are so early on in the project. Here is our first attempt:
We want the Madeiran community and energy tourists to have a fun learning environment to understand Madeira’s energy systems through an interactive experience. We will measure our success based on learning and behavioral outcomes and whether the museum implements our design.
The feedback we got from our advisers was this attempt was too long and lacked specificity. We were told to strive to make this the statement that we look back on a few months out when we’re confused about the state of our project that will restore our sense of direction.
Look forward to another few iterations on this guy.
Budget and Schedule
We made our first budget with fees for interpreters, travel, and materials in mind. Our advisers recommended that we spend less on materials and spend a bit more on traveling to museums for inspiration and for a bit of competitive analysis.
Along those same lines, they noticed that we set aside a lot of time for prototyping in our first semester schedule and recommended we devote more time to research and visioning instead.
Logo
Over the weekend, we individually brainstormed logo ideas and brought them in to our meeting on Monday to discuss and decide. Many great ideas fought bravely, but ultimately only one would live to see a bright future scattered among project documents and plastered proudly onto medium blogs and portfolios.
Stephanie brought in an idea that involved the symbol for electric current placed inside a circle such that it all looked a bit like a circle around mountains or waves. Maybe by the time you are reading this, you will be able to see it rather than suffer through this bad explanation.
We liked it because it had meaning for our project at the electricity museum, our team name, and the mountainous island of Madeira.
Background Research
Our research phase began with us finding the basics or many topics pertaining to our project (museum pedagogy, sustainable energy, local politics, etc) and presenting them all to each other.
We determined areas that we found interesting or promising and areas that we wanted to learn more about. We also began lining up interviews with some M-ITI professors doing projects in related fields.
We got a lot done this week just before our break began, but as I suspect will be the case most weeks, there is still so much to do! See you next week!
