Research and Idea Generation...and Selection

First period...

• As your first entry, work on brainstorming and mindmapping potential toy design ideas that you have with the rest of the team members
• You can use mindmapping tools like MindNode and others that your team is comfortable with. Please do include a picture/jpeg into your team's journal as evidence of your team's work
• List out as many possible ideas for toys as you can, using any idea generation tools that you and your team are comfortable with. Some examples would be SCAMPER, Morphological Analysis, Force Fitting, etc...tools that you have used in previous ADMT and I&E lessons in 2010. You may use pictures/sketches/photos to help you with your journal entries

Second period...

• Once you have brainstormed these ideas, select 3 of these that you and your team have considered to be the ones with the most potential, or the ones that you think you would like to consider for follow-up development
• List out these selected ideas into your team's journals, bearing in mind that for each of them, your team would have to answer the 5W1H questions
• Rank these 3 ideas in the journals and answer the following essential questions:
• What are the main ideas of the toys that your team have selected?
• What are the design philosophies of the team's proposed toys?
• How do you think the proposed toys are better than the current existing ones?

SCAMPER'ing...

Ideation: Applying 'SCAMPER'

View more presentations from irfan darian.

Shape Borrowing...

Ideation: Shape Borrowing

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Reminder...

To the class of 2-05, please remember to become a follower of this blog, so that I would be able to keep track of your entries in your blogs.

SketchWorks 4

From square and rectangular-based shapes and forms, we move into circles and ellipses. Take note of the following elliptical shapes and forms, and then sketch a minimum of 2 for each of the objects shown.

Ellipses: Wine bottle and glass

Ellipses: Milk bottle - Note the different ellipses for different angle of view

Ellipses: Plant Vase

Ellipses: Rice Pot

SketchWorks 3

As a follow up from your exercises on crating/cubing methods, sketch out the following shapes and forms, based on the basic cubic form. Do at least 2 of each shape/form in your sketch books:

Household furniture 1: Applying crating/cubing methods

Household furniture 2: Applying crating/cubing methods

SketchWorks 1 and 2

For your sketching exercises in Weeks 2 and 3, please do the following 2 exercises:

1. Title: Isometric Boxes - Do about a page's worth of isometric boxes, starting from the 3rd page of your sketchbook. Do a minimum of 6 boxes please.
2. Title: 12 shapes - Sketch out the 12 boxes shown below, by applying the crating methods. You are allowed to draw out these shapes on MORE than one page.

12 shapes

Your task for week 2 & 3

These are the initial tasks that I would require your group to do:

1. Get into your Toy Design project group and share a Google Doc Word document as a group. Name the document as: InitialResearch_2011_205_TeamA.
2. Invite me to share your document. I will give my email address in class.
3. Each group is supposed to select one category from the previous blog post.
4. For the selected category, please answer the following 5W1H, and another 3 Essential Questions:
• Who is the game's/toy's intended audience?
• What is the main idea of the game/toy?
• Where is the game/toy invented? Where can it be played?
• When is the game/toy invented?
• Any reasons why do you think the game/toy was invented?
• EQ1: Why do you think the game is designed that way?
• EQ2: What is the PHILOSOPHY behind its design?
• EQ3: What are the other possible roles or functions of this toy, if any?
5. Each team member is supposed to use a colour except for RED to input their contributions to the document.

Doing an Environmental Scan...

Part of trying to invent or create something new or creative, is to look at what is available out there, and see to it that you are not doing something that has already been done...i.e. reinventing the wheel. As toys and games are usually categorised into a few sub-categories, the list below are just perhaps a proposed list of how some of these toys could be grouped together in terms of their function/playability:

1. BOARD Games
2. CARD Games
3. Toys that involves SHOOTING a projectile
4. Doll-like toys
5. Movie-inspired toys (which do come in a variety of forms)
6. Construction-set-based toys
7. Wooden-based toys
8. Toys that are miniaturised versions of real games/toys (e.g. Table Soccer)
9. Water-themed toys
10. Puzzle-based toys (e.g. Soma cube...shown below, Rubik's cube)
11. ...and many others

http://www.amazon.com/Natural-Soma-Cube-Crafted-USA/dp/B000R5L1K6

Group Deployment

The project on Toy Design is done as a group. Listed below is the group assignment for the entire class.

Group	NAME
A	AMRIT SINGH
A	CATHERINE LIM
A	KENNETH TEH
B	ALPHA CHUA YE JIE
B	JONATHAN THEN
B	TADIKAMALLA VIVEK
C	DANIEL CHAN
C	MUHAMMAD MIRZA
C	WONG KAI JIE ELIJAH
D	MOHIT
D	KHOO WU SHEN
D	TAY KUN YAO
E	PRANAVI
E	KIEREN CHUA
E	TAN WEI, ADAM
F	AISYAH BTE MAZLAN
F	LIM SHI-YI MATTHEW
F	TAN ZHI YONG
G	ABIGAIL
G	FOO ZHIXIANG
G	SAMUEL ONG

Essential Questions...Part 1

The following are some initial Essential Questions (EQ's) that I would like you to reflect and think about as you go about doing the initial stages of your Toy Design project for ADMT.

1. What are TOYS?
2. Why are TOYS only considered as equipments of play?
3. What are the other roles of TOYS?
4. What makes a TOY, a TOY?

Guidelines on Toy Design

As discussed and presented in class, these are the guidelines that you would use for your Toy Design Project...

1. The educational toy should encourage the imagination and development of life skills of children aged between 5 and 8. Children can play with the toy individually or in a group. The toy should help in the development of the children’s mathematical skills, scientific discovery ability and creativity in a fun way.
2. The toy or kit should be able to fit in a cuboid of 300 x 300 x 300 mm.
3. Participants are encouraged to use engineering components such as lights, buzzers, motors, rubber bands, etc, to create a multisensory experience.
4. Participants are to provide the product description, clearly illustrated design sketches with rendering/shading/colouring, as well as a simple and easily understood operating instruction.
5. Bonus points would be given for the use of sustainable materials. 

Warm welcome to 2011...

A very warm welcome to the class of 2-05 Year 2011. I hope that you have had a good rest over the 2010 holidays, and are raring to go for 2011. These are the key content areas that your would handle during your Year 2 for ADMT:

• Semester 1: Toy Design - as mentioned during my first lesson with you, the deliverables are still tentative, and would be finalised within the third week of January. Proposed ones are the design and construction of a toy that fulfills certain design specifications and criteria
• Semester 2: Basic Architecture...Layouts and Spaces - developing a proposed learning space using models (cardboard and virtual) on an existing area. This would require basic knowledge on exterior designs, and an awareness of the requirements of a learning space, as well as some basic knowledge on optimising use of spaces in land-scarce Singapore

Cheers and have a great 2011
Mr Irfan Darian