What Should We Eat?

This leg of the project was hard. I had a few goals going in: re-do the decorative skin of the device, design a better feeder-chute to prevent the thermal paper from getting caught, and most importantly, actually print recipes. I only achieved the first two goals, and attempted. so hard. to do the third one. I chose this project to re-visit because I was not happy with the way that I did the text on the previous iteration, and that I had already made an effort to print recipes and knew the solution was within reach (it wasn't). Either way, I'm pretty happy with how the device came out, though it wasn't improved technically and computation-ly in any way.

I spent most of my time working on the code of this project because I knew that would take the longest. I actually got the code to work in isolation well, printing .txt files from an sd card that greatly expanded my program's memory. What I found, though, when I put that code into the remainder of my code that would run the lights, printer, and buttons of the device, everything would break. What I eventually discovered was that the SD card library took up more than 30% of the Arduino's RAM, and in order to run everything else properly there needed to be around 50-60% of the RAM to be free. Seeing as my code already took up round 30% of RAM, the math just didn't math. I found this out the night before the show at 2AM. YAY. What I thought could work to carry this project over the finish line was an Arduino Mega, which does have much more RAM than an Uno, but attempting that day-of wasn't possible. In the past, I've always worked modularly because what I was asking of the Arduino was possible and upon combining these different modular pieces of code, it has always worked out. I didn't anticipate the technical challenges of this challenge, and it ended up biting me in the ass because of how linearly I worked. In the future, I think I both have the knowledge from this project and the insight to determine technical feasibility before working on code, so that I can find the most appropriate board and software to work with before locking in.  That all being said, the way that I remedied the issues of RAM and lack of storage I felt was strong. Instead of printing the recipes, the printer only printed a recipe name. I had supporting documents that people could take with them during the exhibition with a list of all possible recipes and associated tinyurls, so that they could actually find and try each recipe themselves. This helped me talk through my project a lot more, and gave people a keepsake that was useful as well. 

The construction and design of the project went way better, because I was only really re-skinning and re-working small parts of a pretty finished piece. I think having skinned (upholstered?) the project once, I was much more prepared to do it again and could try out different techniques as before. I discovered that you can cut the felt really nicely on the laser-cutter, which was really cool and created a beautiful effect when overlayed on top of white felt. Something I've always had trouble with regarding the fidelity of Ideate projects was that they always looked like Ideate projects. Plain acrylic or plywood and gray 3d prints are easy to fabricate and get a point across, but when it's public user-facing, the presentation of a project is super important to me as a communications designer. I really enjoyed working with these new technologies to create a visual effect that spoke to a lot of people (and to me, creatively). Because of this project, I became a lot more comfortable experimenting with the laser cutter, leading to some really cool applications in my design courses which I was stoked to share with my peers.

The exhibition itself was an interesting design challenge that I wish I had more time to prepare for. People (i think) loved my project because it was very grounded in everyday struggles. When I talked people through my reasoning, a lot of them could relate to feeling stuck in habit. People got keepsakes, new recipes to try, maybe wake-up calls to bring more excitement into their relationships and schedules. I spent a lot of time making my project fool-proof and robust, so that if, say a pair of users were spending too much time talking after pressing a button on one site, the device would reset. If, say a single user walks by while I'm not there and hits one button, then leaves, the device would reset. Each button was both super and hot glued in to handle more force, each side of the device had a blade for cutting paper. This worked for most people. I did not anticipate 6 children. It was fun to figure out a way to explain to kids how to interact with my device in a way that made sense to them. They didn't care much for my project concept, they just wanted to hit buttons. Explaining to them how to work together to get the printer to print, and then get the paper out tested the construction of my device, but we made it through.

Overall, I wouldn't say that I bit off more than I can chew with this project. The code itself was within my technical knowledge. The fabrication was fun and experimental, and I had a great time doing it. The exhibition was fun (loud ass noise and flashing lights aside), and I enjoyed talking to people about a project that reflected a lot of my personal experiences and values. I just think that in combination with everything else I was doing, it was incredibly hard to emotionally regulate and feel in control. I think in hindsight, I know to spend more time working at final fidelity rather than in isolation, and that it's important to stay on track with all aspects of a project instead of just the part that's giving me the most trouble. I lost a lot of time with other fabrication and set-up because I was fighting with the RAM of a board, something that was way out of my control.