My Final Project

My first shot at using animation on Fusion for my initial project idea...to be updated!

The Idea + Spiral Development

Power Grid My final project idea is to make an interactive sensory board for local power analysis and political education. Designed for community organizers, educators, and everyday Tennesseans, it transforms abstract concepts of political economy into a tangible, hands-on experience that reveals interrelations of power between institutions. This tool would amplify the basic practice + skill of power mapping for the purpose of supporting groups to develop sharper strategy for campaigns and direct actions. This will be made specific to Tennessee but with the intention that it can be adapted anywhere. Outside of facilitated settings, it could be used as free-standing interactive device displayed in public libraries and community centers.

How it works: This board is for use by individuals or in facilitated group workshops. Users place blocks representing real entities in Tennessee onto a sensory board that provides real-time feedback about each block placed. It will have generic block types (detention centers, corporations, government officials, public safety, labor unions, alternative institutions, etc.) which will be made more specific through programming/databasec(for example, a detention center block can be programmed to represent CoreCivic). As blocks slide into place, a connected screen displays info about each entity: overview, economic/social/envrionmental impact, etc. When blocks share connections (ex. board members, investors, political donations) the grid lights up in real-time. Since these power relations are always changing, the programming will be developed in a way that is adaptable and editable so organizers can update information.

Additional features could include:

LEDs on blocks could flash different colors based on each block its connected with
Incorporate a special feature that displays a visual map (ex. tracking top donors/campaign contributions, investments made)
Real-time integration with live data sources on each entity
Capacity to specify actual location (ex. input zip code/range) where output data correlates to data from actual area

Initial Inspiration Credits Three sources sparked my initial final project idea:

1) a conversation I had with a community member (a Nashville-based engineer skilled in cooperative economics) about translating community visions into prototypes for building real-world projects 2) discovering student Vincy Xiao’s final project “CitySynth” 3) diving deeper into the project that inspired her by MIT Media Lab City Science group called “CityScope.”

Since I don't have direct experience in urban planning, I shifted from my original idea to one with the same design concept but with a thematic focus that I'm more familiar with. I also found this student Justin's final project which offered much inspiration for me on design process.

Spiral Development

As a newbie, I found I struggled to think through what a spiral development plan for my final project would even look like without deeper knowledge in embedded programming and electronics. To support me with knowing more of what I don't know, I wrote a detailed prompt for Deepseek, describing my final project idea and asking it to generate a spiral development plan with some parameters I've thought through so far. My full prompt and the response is long so I have linked to the prompt file here. This helped tremendously!

And with that, here are the latest sketches on how my project can develop from a basic to advanced level:

final project sketch

Progress Log

2D and 3D design

During Week 1, I came up with my project idea and initial sketches.

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:

sketch of board