Blog #3

Today, we had mini blocks going around talking about implementing technology if it was necessary, making it fun, not boring and sophisticated, and making it so people would want to interact with the product.After that we all met together to talk about roles and our budget. The main roles were Product Managers, Media and Marketing, and Engineers. There were also sub classes for each. Our generous budget was a whopping $400.00 I was very gracious to know that are core has been very successful and was able to provide us with this budget. We started to make up what we would need for materials, and decided who was going to do what. 

Blog #4

Today was an exciting day. We had to finalize our materials list, which was a little off most likely, since we didn't have a very clear idea of our design. We had a god idea of what we needed but quantity and all materials we needed, we were a little unsure about. During First/Second Block, I drove Allegra and Bryant to Home Depot. Together we picked up all the materials we needed. Our class took over Home Depot that day, and everyone mostly took over the lumber section. Once we got back from our adventure, we had to store our materials in Mr. Jolly's room, which would be our main building area for the project. Afterwards, Allegra and Jose started to draw out the pieces of the metal drum flower.

Blog #5

Today was our first big building day. Together we took the time to finalize and last minute sketches, and confirmed exactly what we would be building. We completed a Gantt chart of what we wanted to accomplish today. We got to cut the posts and supports for the wooden drum flower at a rough estimate of length, since cutting on a Skil saw isn't the most accurate. I took the pieces home and cut them on my saw to clean them up. While my flower couldn't really be worked on, The pieces for the metal drum flower and xylophone were getting worked on. We also had to come up with an idea of what to make the drum pieces out of to go into the petals, since Christophe couldn't bring any of his old drums to take apart and implement into my flower.

Blog #6

Today was our main building today. I brought the pieces that I cut at home. I worked on connecting the support pieces to the post of the wooden drum flower. Next, we  were now able to paint all the pieces during first block. We painted the petals of the flower 4 different colors and painted the stems 2 different green colors. After the paint had dried, during second and third block I worked on attaching everything together. We then tested how they sounded, they sounded alright but needed a slight adjustment.

Blog #7

Today was our last building day. I worked on completing the assembly of the wooden drum. I attached the metal drums with my drill using screws and custom scrap metal braces. I then attached the petals to the "stem" supports. We we finally completed the wooden drum flower. Andrew and Atreyu also completed their xylophone. After we finished our projects, we started to plan out what team members would go out and observe what the public thought of our products. We finally had some of the core come and play/test our project. The other students were very engaged in our end result and together they started to get a little song together, which was building community.

Blog #8

Today, we rejoiced after a weekend of testing our final product at the Town Green. A few members went to the Town Green over the weekend and observed what people thought of our "musical garden." People really liked our prototypes, many kids enjoyed playing. What we found during our observations was, that the Wooden Drum Flower was a little tall for little kids to play. For our solution we would shorten the posts or make it adjustable for people of different heights. We also found that people could really play with just their hands, so going back to improving the sound we would really put time in and study the sound of each instrument, and get it tuned correctly.

Blog #9

Today, we worked on final prototype revisions. Many things could of been better with a bit more allowance in time, the main thing being the sound. Besides that we focused on redesigning the ends of the mallets with rubberized tips, we created holsters to hold the mallets, instead of using string, and finally added rubber underneath the wood keys on the xylophone. I also focused on using gorilla glue to glue in the supports on the wooden drum flower. I was also in charge for making the project cards along with Jose and Karina. We worked on those during second block and finalized the design by lunch.

#10

Today was the day we have been waiting for, presenting to the Town of Windsor. Our Team Leader, Christophe Davis and our Media and Marketing person, Allegra Robertshaw delivered an excellent presentation to the Town of Windsor.  First block they practiced their presentations, while the rest of the group focused on finalizing their blogs, the website, or the final video. Everyone's presentations went great. We were offered a proposal to come and present at the Town of Windsor Revision Plan, and possibly be able to get our idea in the Town Green as an actual display one day.  Last block was a celebration of our success, watching Back to the Future 2, and a final clean up of our projects and materials.

Blog #11

    The Community Project is officially complete. Through these last 11 days or so, I have learned that community is more than just living in the same area. A Community is a way to interact with others, total strangers, and bringing people together with the focus of a product, in this case the "musical garden" to have something to talk about, or interact by playing the instrument. The social experience of people in an community has settled to where people don't like to talk to each other, or know how to start a conversation unless they have a common product to talk about.
    During the whole  design process throughout the weeks, everyone contributed equally on each musical instrument. A good design team is efficient, honors time management, works hard, and has a plan and goal to meet by the end of each day. Our team exceeded all of these requirements, and overall was a great team to be apart of.
       We had three final products overall. Each of them came out great. For my product, the wooden drum flower, I felt the only thing that could of been better, are the metal drum inside each metal petal.  Sound was the main issue with our instruments, but other than that for the time constraints that were had, each instrument came out beautiful, fun to play, and is proven to engage people inside and outside of the community. Overall, I had a great time working with my team, and hope to possibly see a final design of our product in the Town Green one day.