Final Presentation PDF

OK, so I got the presentation down to a respectable size to upload and view, though it still takes about 30 seconds to load on the page. Some parts might be a little confusing without us speaking, but most should be fairly comprehensible without explanation. The original video progressed by clicking. This uploaded "blogger" version just plays straight through, so you'll have to hit pause on the slides you want to view longer.

Maybe over the winter break, I can post the actual video of the presentation.

Cheers,

~R

Jesse and I have been working hard on our thesis, and unfortunately haven't taking a moment to put some of our new work on our blog. So, I'm taking a moment to put up some images from our final presentation. Specifically the final "hero" shots. I'll post the full presentation as soon as I get the file a little smaller.

Cheers!

Survey time!!!

We have a new survey up for parents or guardians of children 2-10 years of age. Even if you're kids are older now, you can imagine back to when they were 2-10 and still take the survey. Cheers.

Click here for the survey!

Feedback from kids...

Just reading through Tom Kelly's book and came across that great part about observing children and getting feedback from them. The seven suggestions actually comes from a Kate, another employee at IDEO.

Number 1 - Ask them about their shoes: Almost every kid has an opinion about their shoes. A big height difference is a barrier to communication, and a good Anthropologist wants to learn as much as possible. Get down on their level and talk.

Pick up the book to check out the other suggestions which includes, "Make them laugh."

Here's a picture of Jesse working at their level.

Cheers!

We're in the thick of it...

We've been doing a bunch of sketching over the last couple weeks, and we've put together a complete concept book to send out. We've already been getting some great feedback on our concepts, even having to weed a few out. But, even at this early stage I see a couple concepts coming to the front.

We're also in the middle of developing our "product requirements document". I've been pouring over safety and regulation handbooks, and there's really a lot to think about when designing playground equipment. At the same time, these constraints have opened my eyes to even more possibilities within our concepts.

Over the next week our so, we'll start to post some of our favorites.

Cheers!

Bread Box and Education vs Play

Another productive brainstorm session yesterday with the two of us and our friend Michael. There's two issues that we came across several times in our discussion. One was exactly how big is the product that we're planning to design going to be. Driving home I thought of the well known expression, "Is it bigger or smaller than a bread box?" At one point we were conjuring up ideas of giant play spaces, the size of a playground. Maybe with inflatable mountains, slides, and the like. Then we were positing that it could be the size of a 'post and platform' playground structure, like that ones in many parks. And finally, we thought it could be a smaller, more personal size. Maybe not as small as a big wheel (that's a funny statement), but something meant for just a few children. I'm not suggesting that it's a bad thing that we are looking at so many different sizes in which to design our product, but rather just how many possibilities of size we have.

Second, we've been wanting to add a element of education into our product, something that maybe doesn't directly say, "This is an education toy, and this is what is being learned," but subtly allows the child to learn, unknowingly, while engaged in play. The challenge we had in yesterday's brainstorm was a focus on product ideas that were too educational, and were leaving behind our main focus of play. Unfortunately, some of the educational ideas were pretty good, so now we'll just need to figure out how to get the 'play' feature back in.

Project Proposal

Jesse is very excited to jump into this semester as well. We've got a new workspace down in SOMA and a ton of work to get through!

Here is a condensed version of the proposal book for our thesis project. Click on the thumbnails to read the pages. Sooner or later, we'll make the full .pdf available for download. Or you can just email either one of us for a copy.

moore_jesse@yahoo.com
ryecrowendesign@mac.com

-jesse