Weekly assessment

There are 27 posts filed in Weekly assessment ( this is page 3 of 6).

A weekend of feedback

I spent my weekend at the Maker Faire in Paris to present both the TeleMandala and my prototype. It was a great opportunity to meet people and to get feedback. My first impressions concerning the prototype were that 0.5cm is way too thick. 0.3 is okay, 0.2 is perfect. The next thing to test was the material: is it more interesting to have a wood render or a plastic render ? 50% of the people preferred the wood, 50% preferred the plastic. In my opinion, I prefer the wooden render but I think it could be an interesting idea to create both. Or maybe people preferred the plastic because of the black color and the contrast it made ? Meaning it could be made of wood but then tainted in black ? I think that this is a better idea than using plastic. Because it could be a great argument to sell the product but also a way to be more respectful towards the natural environment.

I met Cécile Quach, of the City of Paris. She told me that it would be interesting to take part in the “Hackging the de l’Hôtel de Ville” at the end of May. I also met members from the Innovation HUB of Epitech school. I told them about my project because there is a part I won’t be able to prototype fast enough because I won’t be able to mix a coded part with a prototyped part [with softwares like Pixate]. I just sent them a mail with the details of my project, I hope to talk to them soon.

The images below describe the fast prototype I made to test the interest of people ans their preference for a black phone case with colored animations or a wooden phone case with pure white animations.

Prototype Day 1 - Photo by Vassili Glezos

Prototype Day 1 – Photo by Vassili Glezos

Prototype 0.9

Last week, I went to Mon Atelier en Ville to create my prototype thanks to laser cut. I created an illustrator file with my design in it. Then, helped by Baudouin, the owner, I set up the machine to cut with different settings to try different results. Three prototypes were made:

  • on a “medium” wooden plank of 0.5cm
  • on a “medium” of 0.2cm
  • on a black plastic of 0.3cm

What a relief to see a concrete representation of something I have drawn a lot. Even if the Maker Faire required me to create this prototype, I needed it anyway. I needed to stop drawing it, picturing it in my head and just make it real to have it in my hands, to place it on my phone.

[su_custom_gallery source=”media: 577,576,575,574,573,572,570,569″ link=”image” width=”300″ height=”170″ title=”never”]

Maker Faire Paris 2015

This weekend I’ll take part in the Maker Faire in Paris. This is the third where I exhibit [after Paris in June 2014 and Roma in September 2014]. I need to quickly create two prototypes. If I’m fast enough I’ll be able to make a wooden phone case and to cut holes with the laser machine from thr WOMA. Otherwise I can also do it with a piece of paper and print the organic shapes I design.

I also want to design at least 3 screens of the app. Best case scenario: they would also be interactive thanks to a prototyping app. It will help me to gather feedbacks from potential users. There will be Fablab [like the WOMA] and professionals I could talk to. They will eventually give me feedback too. My project is then to rework the concept based on the users reactions.

I won’t be the only one from my school to present something. In fact we have a whole booth dedicated to the school. My colleagues will be there too, presenting a project we have been working on since November in addition to our dissertation. The project is called Telemandala. The name is a reference to the project Telegarden created in 1995. This is a collaborative experience through internet where users can create a mandala by controlling two robotic arms. I’ll let you discover this project through the video below.

Launching of a temporary website

www.be.io.charlesbail.fr

Recently I the idea to create a small platform to explain my project to professionals and teacher [plus my friends & my family]. This website is divided into two main parts:

  • an interactive menu explaining the concept with illustrations
  • a block containing the frequently asked questions

I consider it as a milestone; with all the previous ideations, it’s a way to make the project more concrete and consistent. Some people I met before still had in mind the idea of an old ideation. By creating this simple website and mailing it, I’m proceeding at an update. To me, it’s also a good exercise because I need to be very explicit and have a clear presentation. I realized that I’m often tempted to explain all my thoughts when I only need to explain just a part of it.

I received some good feedback on it. But I guess some things need to be reworked such as the first slide of the presentation. I think is doesn’t show clearly that my concept is a phone case which protects the screen [Jonathan told me to maybe find a better word than “phone case”, it could avoid the confusion]. Also, some people didn’t understand at first that everything was linked to an app. I will rework the illustrations and the text.