Exploration

Improve Your New Skills to Become a Maker!

You've just made your first prototype! Congratulations!  🎉

The first part of the course introduced us to digital fabrication techniques and the many opportunities they offer, both in the way objects are designed and produced and in their uses and life cycle. In this second part of the course we will expand our knowledge of digital fabrication techniques by conducting an exploration in the form of case study.

To conduct your exploration you will identify and then analyze existing objects that use digital fabrication techniques to provide solutions to problems related to a given topic. As with the first part of the course we have prepared a documentation template to guide you in your exploration, you will be able to duplicate this template at the end of this page.

Subject

Your subject has been defined by the tutor who will accompany you in part 3 of the course. During this part you will work in groups on this same topic to design and build a prototype.

Your subject

Your subject has been defined by your tutor from one of the  17 Sustainable Development Goals that the United Nations has set to build a better future for all. Watch the video below to learn about these 17 goals. 👇

Your subject is

This subject is from . You can start your search by reading more about this goal here: UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Your subject may surprise, upset or give you lots of ideas. Basically, it doesn't matter, it's normal for you to react to a statement and quite healthy!

Imagine you are a member of an R&D team and this topic has been assigned to you by your company you probably won't want to or be able to answer the question directly. So you need to understand why this question exists, what supports this question. Why use this technology over another? And is this the right target? It is through your individual explorations that you will be able to answer all these questions and reformulate the problem.

Methodological tools

Problem

As the name suggests, a research question (sometimes called problematique) is particularly central in a research project, such as a thesis or even a dissertation. But it is more generally a fundamental starting point when you're trying to tackle an issue through a well-defined problem. If you want to propose a relevant solution, which meets a need or a demand, you absolutely must take your time to carefully formulate your research question.

So basically, what is a research question? It is the question that the project sets out to answer. Remember that you have to be the most precise as possible. Your research question must meet all the criterias below:

• it expresses the specific problem the project aims to solve
• it mentions the potential users and ideally the end-beneficiaries
• it gives the context the project focuses on
• it is formulated in an interrogative form

You may not need right now to invent original solutions, but you will have to be innovative in the Part 3 of this course, so take this opportunity to practice formulating a good research question now.

Here are some examples of bad research questions:

• ❌ How can we reduce noise pollution?
  → This is much much too general.
• ❌ How to reduce noise pollution in big cities?
  → Still too general, no context and no users / beneficiaries mentioned.
• ❌ How does the Ambi-city open source mobile app use noise pollution data collected by citizens to educate to this major health issue?
  → This describes the project more than the issue and the context.
• ❌ How can we reduce noise pollution in schools?
  → We're starting to get somewhere, but we're still not sure who the users of the project are and the issue is a bit vague.
• ❌ People raising kids under 8 years old in big cities should have a priority access to the flats that are less exposed to noise pollution.
  → This is a statement, not a question.

Here are some better examples of what can be expected as research questions. As you can see, they are all addressing noise pollution but in quite different ways:

• ✅ How can we motivate city residents to collect noise pollution data with their phones in order to contribute to academic research?
• ✅ How can the municipalities use noise pollution data to orient their urban planning policy?
• ✅ How can we provide reliable noise pollution maps to vulnerable people (e.g. people with chronic high sleep disturbance, cardiovascular problems, etc.) at key moments such as renting a flat or accepting a job offer?
• ✅ How can noise pollution time data improve the daily life of people suffering from anxiety in urban areas?

Now it's your turn to try to formulate a relevant and precise research question regarding the project you're documenting!

Persona

A persona in user-centered design and marketing is a fictional character created to represent a user type that might use a site, brand, or product in a similar way.

W. Lidwell; K. Holden; J. Butler, Universal Principles of Design

Personas are useful in considering the goals, desires, and limitations of users in order to help to guide decisions about a product such as choices of features, interactions, visual design...

Ok so how are we supposed to define such a fictional character? First we must be sure that we're talking about the right type of persons: our concerns here are the actual users of the product, who are not necessarily the same people as the end-beneficiaries. Also, we'll focus on only one type of users.

Then we have to build a profile of the type of users we focus on, by defining a set of characteristics such as their name, motivations, family status, age, etc. What are their habits? Their hobbies or activities? Do they have a job, study? What are their goals, their limitations? Here is a small list of what should be mentioned in your persona's description:

• First name
• Age
• Activity / Profession
• Place of residence, country, environment (city, countryside, etc.)
• Family status
• Income
• List of hobbies and passions
• List of needs, desires, dreams
• List of problems and frustrations
• Major issue related to the subject

You can present all this info the way you want as long as you defined at least all the above characteristics. Fell free to add pictures if it makes your persona more tangible!

Usage scenario

When you'll design a product or service in a user-oriented approach, you'll have to take in account the user experience you want to offer. Before diving into subtle ergonomic details, we first need to describe the user journey's big picture. A very common and effective tool to do so is the usage scenario. A scenario is a sequence of explanations describing a scene. In our case, we'll use scenario to demonstrate how the user interacts with the product. Here are some tips to help you make a relevant Usage scenario:

Write down the usage scenario on a draft, in 5 to 6 steps rather general, with words. It must start with the initial situation (problem) and end with the resolved situation in chronological order, and should contain:

• The context of the interaction
• The user's motivations
• The actions performed with the product
• The consequences of the interaction

Benchmark

Now that you have a problem, a persona and a usage scenario, do some research on the internet to try to find similar projects or projects that address the same issues.

Explain in your Documentation template why those projects are different from yours:

• What are their limits ?
• Do they address exactly the same persona?
• Is the solution relevant to the problem?

Techniques

Don't forget that we are in a prototyping class! So the main goal of this exploration stage is to understand how manufacturing techniques can be employed within a project and to see the benefits they can bring.

To do this we invite you to choose right now a technique that is part of one of the following two modules:

• Additive manufacturing
• Subtractive manufacturing

These two modules are a continuation of what we covered in the first part of the course and you can choose the technique at your convenience. Choose the one that seems most relevant to your topic, or the one that sparks your curiosity. It will also be possible for you to change techniques during your exploration if your research leads you in another direction.

Documentation

We will once again use Notion to document our work. A documentation template on Notion has been prepared specifically for this part, it should be completed progressively throughout the exploration.

Similar to Part 1 of the course, the evaluation for this part will be done solely on the basis of the documentation. Before we embark on our exploration let's start by duplicating the documentation template.

Here are the steps to follow to duplicate and use this template:

1. Login to your account on Notion
   

2. Duplicate the following template: P2 Exploration - Documentation Template (It may take a little time, be patient!)

3. Write the introduction to your document: indicate your name as it appears on BrightSpace and the name of object you have chosen.
4. Complete all pages as you progress through the modules as shown in this example: Pollinator for fruit trees
   

Let's go explore some solutions!

Now that our documentation is ready we will start our exploration. First we will seek to identify several existing solutions related to our topic, then we will focus our analysis on the solution that we feel best addresses a real problem related to the topic and we will document that solution.

In order to provide the clearest vision of the possibilities offered by manufacturing techniques the exploration must be rich. The goal is to map as clearly as possible the scope of the subject and analyze how the selected object was designed and made. It is essential to multiply sources and diversify connections with elements related to the subject, even if they seem at first glance remote. This means focusing on what seems new, surprising or unknown. Exploration should thus take you out of your comfort zone to explore unfamiliar topics.

Here are the steps to follow to complete your exploration:

1. Jointly analyze the topic and the chosen technique to define keywords

   You can rely on the milestones and indicators given by the UN for the goal related to your topic: refer to the UN website

2. Research these keywords and use them as cues to direct your exploration, work through associations of ideas by putting aside your aprioris and prejudices.

   To help you with your research we have listed sites where you can find projects, you can find this list at page Resources.

3. List at least 4 existing projects that address a problem related to the given topic.

   During the course of your research you may find that you run out of projects that seem relevant, or that at some point in your exploration you feel lost or at a dead end. To get out of such a situation you will need to broaden your search field further and define new keywords from those you have listed in step 1 and 2.

4. Analyze your results by answering the following questions:
   • Who is or could be the user? Is it well identified or easily identifiable?
   • Is it addressing a real problem directly related to the given topic?
   • Does the use of the technique provide a real benefit?
     OR
     Can this project be improved through one of the making techniques presented in the course modules?
5. Select the solution that best answers the previous questions and has the greatest impact on the targeted problem or could have a better impact in its improved version.
6. Re-state as clearly as possible the problem being addressed by the object in the form of an interrogative sentence as in the previous examples.

   This step is very important: clearly restating the problem will cause you to question the meaning of the project and the difficulties it seeks to solve. It will also allow you to begin to take ownership of the concepts and methods that were used.

7. Document this solution on Notion by following the instructions below.