Reflections on Theme 5

This week we focused on Design Research which is about the actual design of an artifact. Haibo Li's lecture was about idea to prototype. He touched on design technologies and prototype research. He discussed that in order for design research to be successful you must filter the ideas, validate and find proof of concept, evaluate usability, and communicate. He used the example that you can't outrun a hungry bear, but the solution may be viewed as different by different people. He said we are all blind and suffer from tunnel vision and will all make mistakes if we just use our eyes. He also mention that its not just about doing the right things but most importantly doing things right.

I liked how the seminar was structure this week in creating a visual representation of our research papers in our groups. Beau had a very interesting article about a soft bodied robot idea presented by Harvard and made into a tested prototype. I had actually just watched a video earlier this week about this exact robot and just thought it had looked really neat and offers many possible functions for the future. Their design research in this article was pretty straight forward that was essentially idea to prototype.