Recently in ME-313 (Human Values & Innovations in Design) Category

For this design project, we had to create a solution for a cheap, easily distributed, low payload air-droppable disaster shelter that had be easily or automatically deployable. These were to be designed for mass manufacture and to be used primarily in developing nations in massive disaster events. Language differences and potential illiteracy was to be taken into account.

My team began by outlining and prioritizing the problem's design constraints. We felt that the most important criteria were collapsibility/packing efficiency and instant deployment and usability.

We found inspiration in airplane emergency inflatable slides and life jackets, automobile air bags and sun shades, insulating foam, and collapsible laundry hampers. Driven by cost and deployment speed, we decided to build on the laundry hamper and sun shade ideas, and created this concept:

Our concept would be palletized and air-dropped in a disaster zone, where a user would be able to easily transport it to the desired location. Once there, a simple tug on a cord would release folded spring steel hoops that would pop up to form the structure of the shelter. The walls of the structure, a heat-reflective Mylar-like sheet, would unfold with the hoops.

Deployed, this half-domed structure would accommodate a family of 4, although it would also be able to collapse to nearly 5% of its deployed volume for efficient packing and shipping.

Rapid prototyping was the primary focus in this exercise, and as such, we created a wide variety of mock-ups, ranging from small wire and fabric disks illustrating the unfolding process to a full-scale walkthrough model that allowed us to visualize the actual space.

We were pretty pleased with our concept, and felt that it successfully addressed the problem. Aided by our successive iterations of prototypes, we achieved our goals of maximizing the shipping/packing efficiency, minimizing the deployment

Our first design project for ME313, Human Values & Innovation in Design, was a short two-day project on the divide between the digital and physical worlds, especially as it related to digital assets and memories.

Problem Statement:
The digital age has brought many affordances such as digital imaging and easy video recording, but their ease of use has not been without a cost. The success of digital technologies has created a deep gulf between physical experiences and digital ones, and experiences such as passing a photograph around has almost vanished entirely. Even though we have evolved as creatures who have an intimate relationship with the physical world, our digital experiences underutilize our intuitive understanding of physical spaces and manipulating physical objects.

The ease and low cost associated with photography causes a flood of images, a huge back-end task that is difficult to get around to. One's memories get buried among hundreds of folders.

Design Challenge:
Create a novel experience in the physical world to deal with one's memories and digital assets. Express your concept in any medium that you are comfortable with.

Solution:
I began by outlining the problem I wanted to address: digital photography has made it so easy to take, edit, and store photos, I end up with thousands of pictures in countless folders on my computer that begin to lose their relevance and significance in my life. After being filed away in deeply nested folders, I rarely revisit these pictures, perhaps when I occasionally clean out my hard drive or if I accidentally open a wrong folder.

Those occasions when I do browse through my old photos are wonderful. I enjoy the element of surprise and unexpectedness at stumbling upon these memories and reminiscing. Unfortunately, this is a rare occurrence.

With this in mind, I raised the question, "Can I recreate this experience of surprise and delight on a more regular basis?"