The first step of beginning our The Long Now project was to get into groups of 4-6 and that's just what we did. We initially started with a group of four and put all of our ideas together and came up with this really creative idea that everybody seemed to love after giving our 2 minute presentation to our team.
What we did
Our group focused on the fact that we wanted what we called a "Moving Mural", which was a few disks with 8-12 faces (it varied on different disks) on it to put each of our murals on that plays a sort of short story or sort of flipnote telling a historical story based on our theories. We also figured that we would want half of the disks in the bx and half protruding out of the box it would be in.
What things did you consider and why did you do what you did?
We had the same thing our head that we couldn't forget. This whole "Thing" that we are trying to make is going to be in an elementary school. This has to be kid friendly and it has to be interesting and keep them intrigued. So thats why we wanted to make the murals spin, some might go faster than others, we thought. And we could put some humor into it or maybe even some sounds.
What do you think about the work that has been done? What could you have done better?
I was really happy with what we came up with and how we were able to all work together without any conflict or distractions. I'm not completely sure if we really did anything that I would change because this process was pretty straight forward and easy.
Whiteboard brainstorm part 2
This part 2 is basically us getting more critique of our initial brainstorm but revised and more specific after putting in more details into it then we had a vote on our team for who's was the most popular.
What we did
What we basically did was take our first very vague idea of our "Moving Mural" and then making it clear enough for other people to get our idea and to make them enjoy it better. We wanted to make it super kid friendly but that later changes a bit because of complications. We also made a general and also very vague idea of our storyboard which mainly focused on RISE/SOCIETY/CLIMAX/FALL of an empire. We later that day had a vote throughout the team on who's was the most popular and we came in second!
What do you think about the work that has been done? What could you have done better?
I was pretty content with what we had succeeded in this step of the process but if I do think we could have also put more thought into the storyboard because we were and still are a bit behind compared to others in that aspect.
What did you consider and why did you do what you did?
I think that we got a little behind on the storyboard because we got so many compliments on our "Moving Mural" so we we got really excited and focused more on that and how it would look and not so much our storyboard and I'm a bit disappointed about that.
Making the prototype
Our next big step was to make the prototype of our creative "Moving Mural".
What we did
Thanks to a bit of critique and some wise words from Scott we began our prototype made from solely tape, cardboard, Styrofoam and paper. We first had to figure out measurements which we had an idea of before hand with the 2nd brainstorm but got more into detail with this one. We made the faces out of cardboard and the 2 large faces on the top and bottom of Styrofoam and later realized we should draw something on the faces so we covered them with paper and Annika drew every sing one of them :). Ever different part of our prototype was all held together by tape! So so much tape its ridiculous.
What do you think about the work that has been done? What could you have done better? Whats the next step?
Overall I am super happy with all the work we accomplished. I don't think anybody did nothing or got bored. Our prototype represents exactly what we had imagined and it helped us change what we needed to change and it really helped us reflect on our mistakes. The only thing i would say we could have done better on would be the actual mechanism. We still don't know how this is actually going to move but that's exactly what were working on now and were doing great so far :)