Week 3: A bridge too far

We discussed the homework given last week in the Lecture, Week 2: Design Activity which was "Design an interior navigation system for dementia patients care and residence including 24 patients, 4 care takers and 12 admin staff" As well as being a brief I determined that this was also a problem, primarily for dementia patients as their memory makes it hard for them to identify signage. In a group of three we discussed our design thinking for this brief. We found that we have three separate target markets; dementia patients, carers and administration staff meaning that signs for each will be different in regards to their needs as well as the goals and constraints. We drew a mind map looking at the different design considerations that would be necessary such as, layout of the building and positioning of signs, size/scale, colours (strong contrast, easy to see), typefaces and illustrations/ keys to help dementia patients identify the message conveyed. More research would be necessary in regards to the dementia patients to further understand their condition and using certain information to inform design decisions.

In todays activity we were given the task to construct a bridge that would reach over a 30cm gap and hold 500gms of weight. We were only given four peaces of paper and one length of string to do so. In our group our inital design thinking started with our constraints. The A4 paper given was not sufficient in length to reach over a 30cm gap so we had to double our paper over. We thought about triangles being a strong shape and threaded string through these shapes to provide some strength and support. When this failed we found that with limited paper when we created more strength our surface area was compromised and if we created more surface area our strength was compromised. With these problems in mind we used a twisting method for more strength and bound our individual pieces together to create more surface area, whilst strong it was not long or wide enough to support the weight. On our last attempt we doubled our paper over for more length and folded using a zig zag style to create multiple points of strength along the bridge. We bound string around the bridge to prevent the it from collapsing when weight was distributed. This proved to be our most successful attempt.

Our last design solution

Whilst trial and error seemed to be used a number of times in creating our bridge, a thinking process was evident and important in identifying problems with our structure and producing new solutions that would ultimately lead to our final product. In comparison to our homework brief I used a similar thinking process but with more pre planning and idea generations. In looking at different design factors I could see certain problems in regards to our target market, narrowing down solutions more likely to succeed. In a professional situation which the homework brief outlined, more design thinking and detailed planning is needed to understand the main problems before producing prototypes. This is the main difference between the thinking processes used in these design briefs. This idea is explored by (Raghavendra Reddy, Gudur, 2014) in the Week 4 Lecture: Design processes and methods (order out of chaos). 

Sarah McGill
u3115075

References: 

Dr. Raghavendra Reddy, Gudur, R-R.G (2014), 8600 Graphic Design Thinking and Research, Lecture 2, Week 2: Design Activity. Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=11754. 

Dr. Raghavendra Reddy, Gudur, R-R.G (2014), 8600 Graphic Design Thinking and Research, Lecture 4, Week 4: Design Process and methods (order out of chaos) Retrieved from http://learnonline.canberra.edu.au/course/view.php?id=11754.