System Thinking – Spring 2019 -Digital Making @ the Illinois Makerlab

This week we focused on the CAD software, specifically Autodesk Fusion 360. Prior to class this week we learned quick shortcuts and the basic fundamental of parametric designing. Dan Banach, education program manager at autodesk, gave an immersive presentation of the world of Fusion 360. He has more than 30 years of Fusion 360 knowledge. He was there from the very start. It all started with a 3D model of a five and quarter sized floppy disk. Dan also simply broke down the ideology of the cloud product innovative software Fusion 360, into three main components: use, design, and make. After his intro we had the task of going through a tutorial of creating a phone charging stand. This helped us get even more familiar with the functions and capabilities of the software.

Dan Banach during the Fusion 360 Workshop

I myself have some knowledge and previous with CAD. However its with solidworks, which is a lot different from Fusion 360. You have similar capabilities, but solidworks is far more complicated. I like how simplified Fusion makes computer aided design. The shortcuts and keys were super easy to pick up on and the drop down menus house every function. Solidworks took me some time to get a stable grip on. Both softwares are great in their own respective ways. Regardless of which a person chooses you’ll still get a understanding of not only parametrics but design thinking. The software gives you a different method of approaching problems and design decisions. The simplest thing from a curve to the material itself of the product all attribute to the overall product.

My final design and render of the phone charging stand

After the Fusion Workshop ended we were given another on “How to Statements” from our TA Mehmet Aydin. This activity allowed us to further explore the centralized themes within our ideas. After choosing the top three themes, which we wrote out in concise sentences, we created a how to statement. Essentially staging a question of how were were going to do some of the things we sought out to solve. Like mentioned in last week’s presentation his is a cycle within the design process. We came to conclusions last week, but this exercise allowed us to revisited, rethink, and revitalize some of those ideas. I feel like now we have a pretty concret grip on the opportunity and the market in which we’re trying to infiltrate.

Trevor Sibby

This week, we learned from expert Mike from a startup named EarthSense, strengthened the connection in our team and started to conduct research and gather information. I have gained many meaning insights and am planning to investigate some areas to further my understanding.

In the class, we first had a session with Mike from EarthSense. I have always known the importance of applying users’ feedbacks into adjusting the design, yet it was different to see a rich example and hear the story behind it. Adjusting one area would affect the previous setting in other areas. Therefore, a perspective of system thinking would be very critical. When the designer knows all the possible impacts, the design can consider all factors and is configured in a way that meets all the requirement. As a business student who has some new product development experience, I kept wondering how to make the products to be successful and have more adopters if I were a part of the team. I recognized some crucial points were to understand the problem it was solving, the pinpoint about people’s adoption behavior and the need to design the introductory marketing, pricing, and packaging plan in a way that could lead the product to cross the tipping point. Hearing the design side of the product, I realized understanding the design side of the product gave me more ideas to brainstorm.

After the talk from Mike, we came up with our team name and designed the logo. Since our focus is design, Saloni saw an opportunity by checking synonyms of “design,” and we decided on Blueprint to be our team name. Then, the designing logo part was the hardest part. We brainstormed about possible configurations and implications associated with the word. As I drew possible designs, I came across the idea to combine B and P together since they both have a round part. However, when I pulled it on paper, it didn’t look good. At that time, my group member encouraged me to configure the design on the software to see the effect. After I did that, I found it actually looked better than what I expected. Learning from the failure in the scratch, I intentionally enlarged the side of P so that the letter P could be differentiated from the letter B. We all loved it and it became our logo. I asked a couple of my friends to guess the meaning of the logo after class, the fact that they got the implication right confirmed me that my design worked. This made me aware that it worth a try to further test the idea and follow the instinct. Next time, I should stick to the idea a little bit longer before I give up too quickly.

Scratch

Our Team Logo

After class, our team began our research by interviewing people who have more experiences than us. One key idea that I learned was the significance of equal accessibility. Previously, I was immersed with the concepts of accessibility and affordability, and now the idea of “equal” just made me contemplate more. The meaning of equality is not to provide the same resources to everyone. Rather, it is to provide resources to people in a way that everyone would be on the same level after the assistance. This would mean that we would need to give more opportunities to some people who started at a lower level. Knowing the difference in resources that people begin with can lead to a better design that will enable everyone to be on the same level.

Huan Wu

I am Huan Wu, a leadership-oriented undergraduate student studying Accountancy, Supply Chain Management and Information Systems/Information Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I chose to major in those areas because I am a person who likes to learn new knowledge continuously and take on challenges. The challenges bring me excitement, as I enjoy the feeling of using my expertise to tackle hard issues, find insights and initiate change. I believe having an understanding of different fields allows me to have a broader perspective when I look at issues in business. I aim at improving myself and learning skills to initiate change and make real impacts in the world in the future.

My LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huan-wu-0507/

Tag: System Thinking

Fusion 360 Workshop

Week 4 – Learning from Observations and Reflections