Emma's notes    
  Class wk 1    
  Principles and practices, project management.    
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ASSIGNMENT
Build our own web-site, make some sketches of our final project.

BUILD YOUR OWN WEB-SITE
For this task I started downloading some of the software suggested during the class:
- LibreOffice Writer/Web
- SeaMonkey
- Smultron
- Dreamweaver
I felt more confident using dreamweaver because it gives you the possibility to work directly on the source code and simultaneously it provides a visual WYSIWYG and code editor; it's very helpuful for a person without html programming expirience. I thought and fix the layout of the page with illustrator, creating the background images and manageing the colors. The stucture of the html page is based on tables and the format is controlled with css code.

MAKE SOME SKETCHES OF OUR FINAL PROJECT
For the final project I would like to develop a toy that can be enjoyable for kids with special needs.
I'm thinking about a toy that must be assembled and that interacts with the kid through different ways: light, sounds, vibrations…… Figure 1 shows one possible implementation of my special toy.

fn_sketch_1

Figure 1.

The toy is made up by different modules that once assembled result into an animal and start to interact.
Inside the body of the animal is located the control sistem (Attiny) of the toy and when all the components of the pet are connected the microcontroller will activate the interation. Figure 2.

cdscsd

Figure 2.

What I also like of this concept is the possibility to offer different variations/animals using the same central body. Figure 3.

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Figure 3.

And if I think how to do it, just few problems rise to my mind:
- how can I do the pratical connection body/component? and the electric short body/connection?
- how can I integrate the electric board in the body?
- which materials and the size?
- who can draw the animals?

I will answer to all my doubts week by week, keeping updated my noteslooking for inspirations and third part experiences. I want to be optimistic.

For the sketches I looked for Ipad applications:
- Bamboo paper
- SketchBookX
and I prefered the second one. The only important advantage I found in SketchBookX is the layers approch of the page and I used this option because I needed to retrace some nice animals.

 

 
  Tools  
 

Web-page: dreamweaver, illustrator.
Final project sketches: sketchBookX.