01. Ideation¶
These were some of the ideas from the first week of FabAcademy. I eventually settled on idea No. 3, the Spice Cabinet.
- A flower object that facilitate communication between a community garden and its community.
- The flower object moves in an animated way to represent the soil’s state of hydration.
- Also displays who last watered, acting as conversation starter.
- More Details here
- Input 1: Posture dection (level of slouching) → Output 2: Some kind of vibration
- Input 2: Detects voice volume → Output 2: Reminder to speak up
- Ability to locate the right spice/condiment in a pantry.
- Recipe function (e.g., Saying “Chai” indicate right combination of spices?)
- More details here
- Modular coat-rack extension for my wooden chair (Interchangeable parts depending on seasons)
- Weather info display, to make sure I’m always dressed for the weather
- More details here
1. Gesturing flower for a community garden¶
The Context:
I enjoy living in houses that have community gardens, however I often find that community gardens are located in slightly remote locations, making engagement building challenging. Also, ensuring adequate watering often became an issue; I often which there was a simple system for keeping track of who watered when.
The Proposition:
My idea was to create an eye-catching flower object that remind residents of plants’ status.
The plant’s demeaner can subtly remind them when plants require watering.
Also, residents can see which person recently watered, serving as a conversation starter among interested residents.
3. Convenient Spice Cabinet¶
I have many spices/herbs, condiments, oils but it’s a nightmare trying to locate the right ones every time I cook. So I would like to find a system to keep them organized, and a system that indicates where the spices I need are.
The spices will be activated by voice control:
These are some potential requirements:
4. Coat-hanger & bag holder extention¶
When I quit my last job, I spent the 1 month in between jobs to learn Woodworking in Hida Takayama. During this time, I designed and made a chair that was also a coat-hanger.
While I had good reasons for creating this hybrid design, I came to feel like the coat-hanger component and chair component should exist separately.
In FabAcademy, I would like to develop the coat-hanger component further, which will include an Intuitive display of weather information along the rail (using colored light), and a bag-holding station which also features a way to check that I have all my things inside the bag.
