My Final Project Proposal
The project I propose building for Fab Academy is an immersive interactive exhibit. The exhibit is a modular geodesic dome that has mounted on the inside addressable RGB LEDs and a speaker. The user is an attendee of an interactive art gallery or museum who is interested in experiencing a sensory experience.
The user would shape the colors, patterns and sounds through either movement (registered by a sensor in a hub at the top of the dome), RFID tags to choose the patterns, or possibly a mobile app.
The project would be composed of three parts- the hub which contains the sensors and the braces and connectors, which would be modular.
Brainstorming
To come up with this idea, I worked through the posted earlier projects, listing those that I found interesting. I then used chatgpt 5.2 to categorize earlier fab academy projects. My initial prompt was:
“You are a student taking the fab academy class. You want to categorize the different projects that have been made in previous classes, with the aim of understanding what is possible in the class, given the technologies taught, areas in which successful projects seem to focus, and as a means to brainstorm your own project. The URL for the class is https://fabacademy.org/2026/prior.html”
The engine asked me a few quedstions for clarification- I've prompted the engine to always ask me questions to clarify the context and intent. The link to the chat is here. There are some serious problems with the links it provided, but the goal was to help me start considering what is possible given the technologies taught and brainstorm ideas.
I then used listing and free association for about an hour to brainstorm possible project ideas or problems that I would like to solve. I reviewed the list to see if any interested me and wrote them out separately for further elaboration. I had about ten possible ideas that I could pursue.
To refine the list, I thought about how I could evaluate this semi-final list of topics. I remembered an evaluation tool on choosing ideas in a book on brainstorming and creativity (p. 181) - Keith Sawyer, Zigzag. Jossey Bass, 2013.amazon link here- not a plugThis book explained how you could plot your ideas on a matrix:
| Normal/Ordinary Ideas | Breakthrough ideas | |
|---|---|---|
| Highly feasible and useful | Not so original ideas that are highly feasible- Ideas that might be worth pursuing but would require an effective and efficient implementation plan | Ideal concepts- build it. |
| Difficult to make and unclear use | Not so original ideas that are not feasible. Throw it out. | Very original ideas that are not feasible- would need to be really high value/importance to proceed |
I plotted out my ten ideas and the geodesic dome concept appeared to be the concept that would be best suited for this project.
Materials (pending)
| Qty | Description | Price | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Material one | 22.00 $ | https://amazon.com/testoe | Order many |
| Material two | 22.00 $ | https://amazon.com/testoe | |
| Material three | 22.00 $ | https://amazon.com/testoe | |
| Material four | 22.00 $ | https://amazon.com/testoe |