My Final Project

During Week 1, I came up with my initial project idea: Solidarity City Builder: an educational urban imagination tool for community organizers. The idea came from some good conversations, reviewing Vincy Xiao's final project, and learning about the CityScope project by MIT Media Lab. The basic idea was to create an interactive tool for both learning about the extractive impacts of things like prisons, data centers, luxury condos, etc. and envisioning new worlds. The project would comprise a sensory board where users can place blocks which represent city infrastruction like the once listed above and also like parks, libraries, and community centers. While objects are placed, users receive real-time feedback report on community impact of their model city displayed on a connected screen.

Check out my documentation for Week 1 for more on my initial final project idea and sketch.

For Week 2, I further developed the idea and used Computer-Aided Design software to begin to visualize what the board and user blocks could look like. I created a slightly more streamlined sketch before I got started:

An updated sketch of the board

An updated sketch of the user blocks. Simplifying the design a bit here.

Here's a clip of my timeline for design on Fusion:

Here are the direct files for my designs in Inkscape, Fusion, FreeCAD, and OnShape as of Week 2.

Quick Week 3 update: my first item I cut on the laser cutter was a simple cardboard prototype for my final project's sensor board: