Introduction to Mechanisms...

As part of the requirements of the toy design project, your team would have to consider the inclusion of Simple Mechanisms, Simple Electronics and/or Structures into your designs. As a start, today's lesson would cover a basic introduction to simple mechanisms. We would be covering these 4 basic areas of mechanisms, and they are:

1. Levers
2. Cams
3. Pulleys
4. Gears

The class would be divided into 4 groups to uncover some of the content on the above 4 sub-groups. More instructions would be made known during lesson time.

For each of the group formed to tackle the above, these would be your roles:

• Team Leader (1 person): To lead the team in tackling the assigned mechanisms sub-group and assist in the presentation
• Recorder (2 persons): To be responsible in collating and recording observations by the other team members, and to ensure coherence in the delivery of the presented materials
• Researcher (3 persons): To be the key persons in charge conducting research for the assigned sub-topic on Mechanisms. They would also ensure that all media forms recorded are sourced appropriately and attributed correctly

You can use the following 2 sites as your initial references:

• Technology Student
• Systems & Control

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Relief Lesson: Monday, 24th Jan 2011

In my absence, please do the following set of activities during the 2-period lesson:

First period...Research & Idea Generation

• Form up in your Toy Design group, and set up a shared Google doc with me. This would be your ACTUAL working document for the group design journal component of this project. Please share this document with me, and name the file as 209_ToyDesignJournal_TeamX (where X refers to your team alphabet based on my previous blog post)
• 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...Idea Selection & Justification

• 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?

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. Sumo cube, Rubik's cube)
11. ...and many others

Group Deployment

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

A	DAPITO MICHELLE
A	CHIO JIA LE
A	LEE YUCHONG
B	DAVINA LING LI XIN
B	CHOI MIN SUK
B	NGOUI YONG ZHAU PRESTON
C	GWENDOLYN CHEE
C	CHRISTOPHER JOHN
C	NIKLAUS TEO
D	NAVEENA MENON
D	BENJAMIN FHENG
D	SEE TO YU XIANG
E	STACEY YIP YI ZHEN
E	GOH JUN HONG
E	CHAN JUN WEI
F	CHERIN TAN
F	HARDY SHEIN
F	JOHANAN TEO
G	ANG WEI DI, VICTOR
G	JONAN LING SI HONG
G	TIM YAP MING EN
H	TAN XUE WEN, RAYNER
H	LEE SI YUAN

 

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