"Make it Better"
To finish off our freshman year, we were given a choice between redoing a project that we had completed throughout this year, or creating a chair for someone to sit on using only one material, cardboard. Eager to try something new, my group of six decided to create two cardboard chairs with similar layouts, but a few differences.
As with all of the projects this year that included construction, we first had to come up with measurements based on our research and the past year class's successes. For our chair's measurements, we first came up with a height that would be tall enough for an average person and a seat back at an angle that was best for comfortably sitting. While constructing our final projects, it was necessary for us to look at some of the chairs that had worked well and using ideas based on their structure, we created chairs using A TON of cardboard. The layers of both horizontally and vertically stacked cardboard allowed a lot more weight than we had initially expected for our chairs.
As with all of the projects this year that included construction, we first had to come up with measurements based on our research and the past year class's successes. For our chair's measurements, we first came up with a height that would be tall enough for an average person and a seat back at an angle that was best for comfortably sitting. While constructing our final projects, it was necessary for us to look at some of the chairs that had worked well and using ideas based on their structure, we created chairs using A TON of cardboard. The layers of both horizontally and vertically stacked cardboard allowed a lot more weight than we had initially expected for our chairs.
CONCEPTS
|
REFLECTION
The time management for this project was definitely hardest to deal with out of all the projects we completed this year. This was especially hard for our group, since we had chosen to do a completely new project, while most other groups in our class had decided on bettering a project we had prior knowledge about. Despite our disadvantage, I was thoroughly impressed by how well we managed completing the chairs by our deadline. Another part of this project that I got something from was the learning process of designing a chair for both comfort and aesthetics. Our first designs of the chairs seemed to be ideal for sitting, but I soon realized that it is really difficult to create a chair that can stay stable even with many different movements. It helped me to find out how rewarding it can be to finish a final product that covers all of the aspects that you had desired.
One of the fallbacks for this project was our ability to have the entire group on task and working towards our goal during all of our working time. I think that this was because we had such a large group and did not specify what we were planning to complete during our working time to every group member. Another struggle of our group was finding materials that would suffice the size of our chairs. Since our chairs were on a large scale to fit the majority of people, it was harder to find pieces of cardboard that had enough area and were not too flimsy to make the chairs less sturdy. In the future it would be helpful to be more knowledgable about the amount of materials we have access to before choosing the scale.
The time management for this project was definitely hardest to deal with out of all the projects we completed this year. This was especially hard for our group, since we had chosen to do a completely new project, while most other groups in our class had decided on bettering a project we had prior knowledge about. Despite our disadvantage, I was thoroughly impressed by how well we managed completing the chairs by our deadline. Another part of this project that I got something from was the learning process of designing a chair for both comfort and aesthetics. Our first designs of the chairs seemed to be ideal for sitting, but I soon realized that it is really difficult to create a chair that can stay stable even with many different movements. It helped me to find out how rewarding it can be to finish a final product that covers all of the aspects that you had desired.
One of the fallbacks for this project was our ability to have the entire group on task and working towards our goal during all of our working time. I think that this was because we had such a large group and did not specify what we were planning to complete during our working time to every group member. Another struggle of our group was finding materials that would suffice the size of our chairs. Since our chairs were on a large scale to fit the majority of people, it was harder to find pieces of cardboard that had enough area and were not too flimsy to make the chairs less sturdy. In the future it would be helpful to be more knowledgable about the amount of materials we have access to before choosing the scale.