Chair Finished

So this quarter was definitely the most demanding quarter. I think I really learned how to organize myself and start working smarter than longer. Overall great quarter, really glad it is over now. Learned a lot about work ethic.

Staying on Track for Development

This quarter I really tried to concentrate and stay away from getting to far off of the upward sloping graph line of production. Not that design is a perfect process, however in the past I think I have strayed from staying concentrated on continuously developing an idea, and really following a process. In the past I would choose one idea and not want to develop it any further. I would be content with where it was. I had spent so much time on the idea already that further development was unnecessary and there wouldn't be enough time left. That wasn't yielding the results I wanted so I over compensated. I would then keep changing ideas after the ideation phase until I had something that seemed revolutionary. As opposed to continuing to develop features or details of a chosen direction I would keep changing directions and would just be spinning my wheels. I think this was another thing I really learned an got better at this quarter. Following a design process and sticking out with the selected idea and continuing to develop until it was time to build or finish. I think now that I have learned this that I can start to refine my specific process that I like to follow.

Innovative vs. Well Designed

So the chair quarter is finished. I think I really struggled at the beginning of the quarter to figure out what I was going to do with the chair. All of our projects in the past have been based around creating an innovative design feature or product. That is really the goal to do something strange and different, and that is pushed on you. "You are a student do something crazy." I totally agree with this statement. However I was having trouble translating it to the chair project. The chair is something that has been around forever and had millions of variations. At first I was trying to think of something innovative. For the chair quarter I think this was the wrong approach. I didn't need to create some innovative feature. I could still do something different simply based off of the design. The innovative things were going to be in the design details, in a new or interesting shape. This really was the turning point and helped me focus in on my design. I really learned a lot this quarter about work ethic and design overall.

Dutch Furniture

For this project I tried to really create a product based off the ability Dutch design has to make the strange blend in beautifully as normal. Overall I think in the end I did a good job but after discussion at crit I could have removed the alarm clock or changed it to swivel somehow. Also all of my boards this quarter I have been happy with, however I wish I had tied them together more. Chet's boards always are obviously together and it just makes his presentations jump off the wall that much more. We determined the best way to do this was to have similarities but not exact similarities, which can end up being more distracting.