On your web site, make sure that the following are visible:
image(s) of your FlexaWear product
a short video demoing its flexes
documentation of your design process
a 3-5 minute video (or slide deck with embedded audio) of your design analysis
On Ed, under the relevant thread, please:
embed your design analysis video
post a link to your Portfolio
engage with your peers' posts and react to help cultivate a community of learning!
For this homework, you will be creating a wearable object, using a flexagon as your starting point.
In class, we glimpsed articles and other documentation for flexagons, but perhaps the most impactful experience was working with the "embodied" paper forms. Through this homework, your challenge to make a wearable from a flexagon will deepen your understanding and may prompt you to consider exploring the theory further.
You may wish to peruse these sites for inspiration:
You may find the following questions useful in guiding your design process:
What sort of wearable will you design?
What materials will you use?
How will you use an iterative process to prototype and revise?
As with the class challenges
You have limited resources! Time will be one of your biggest challenges, as the physical prototyping and revision process will probably take longer than you anticipate.
You'll need to be creative -- what wearables can you think of? Here are some ideas to get you started:
a bracelet
a scarf
a skirt (part of a flexagown??)
You should think about what you are optimizing for. Some starting suggestions:
ease of construction
availability of material (paper may be your best bet here)
I estimate this homework will take 8-10 hours.
You may work in pairs on this homework. If so:
You can complete 1 and 2 (documentation + final product) together; both portfolios must include the submissions.
You should complete 3 (analysis of your design process) individually.
You will submit everything through your portfolio web site, including:
documentation of your process (40%)
articulate your goal(s)
record your iterative approach (plan, do, evaluate)
your final product (image + file) (20%)
a 3-5 minute analysis of your design process (40%)
This may take the form of a video (please be sure permissions are set appropriately) or a slide deck with embedded audio. You may find the following prompts helpful in organizing your analysis. Be as specific as possible, while also recognizing the limitations of the time constraint. You will not be able to walk through everything you did, but will need to nominate takeaways and important points. You will be evaluated on the clarity of your communication and the depth of your analysis.
How did you go about this homework?
Did talking with a partner in class change your engagement with this homework (versus others in the class)?
What parts did you find straightforward?
What was challenging?
What supported your understanding?
Were there embodied elements that helped you? Could you think of others?
What part of the process is a black box to you?
For this homework, you may use any resources you'd like. You must cite them appropriately (e.g., I talked with a peer about my diagram or I adapted this GitHub repo or I gave Gemini this set of prompts).
To be clear, this includes usage of AI tools, as long as you are:
appropriately documentating and citing your interaction, which should include the platform, prompt and screenshots/links of sample parts of the interaction
analyzing how the usage of the tool(s) helped or hindered your design process
NOTE: MHC's access to Google Gemini provides certain protections of your data.
Some anticipated questions:
No! You probably want to use paper. Even if you'd like to challenge yourself with fabric, you should first prototype with paper!
Sure! By no means required, but if you'd like to incorporate an interactive aspect, you could use your Circuit BlueFruit/Playground or some other innovative idea I haven't thought of!
Post more questions on Ed please!