First

Last week after a crash course in Arduino we were put into groups and set to the task of creating a smart surface constrained by three words. My group, group 3, was dealing with 'wind', 'inflate', and 'daily'. With only an hour and a half we sat down to talk out the problem and shortly thereafter launched into fleshing out out ideas in cardboard and chip board. Several iterations of a power storing devices and turbines took shape culminating in a rushed, slightly sloppy model of a turbine that would store the windpower to be translated to a house fan to cool a living space. None of us were at all satisfied with what we had come up with, I think most of us prefer to have a more hashed out idea before we start building and tinkering (contrary to a few opinions expressed by some of our classmates).

When we met up the following evening, we scrapped the idea and set out to redefine the problem. We had a big breakthrough that night thanks to Ted and split off to build models of our own interpretations of the concept. We reconvened on Sunday and spent form 2pm to 2am (with a break for dinner) fleshing out the concept, putting together the presentation, laser cutting and finally assembling the form. Our group dynamic worked out surprisingly well. Maybe part of that can be attributed to the fact that it's the first week and we are still in the 'polite' phase of relationships with everyone, but I dont think a single argument occurred. Yes, there were discussions and debates, but everyone was patient and considerate.

As Steven said in the presentation, Stephanie was sort of our foreman, keeping us on track. Ted was responsible for both of our key breakthrough and had the modeling knowledge to model and animate the concept. Steven was kind of our feasibility-guy, helping to explain how things would work in real life and we all collaborated on idea generation and solving problems when they came up. At one point Stephanie and I were stuck on how to structure the 'balloon' so that it would fully retract when it deflated for maximum sunlight, so we asked for help and everyone stopped what they were doing until as a group we decided on an appropriate solution. We put a lot of work in and I am happy with what we came up with for the first week. I'm also excited to see what the next group does with it. Even if they scrap the whole thing, it wil be interesting to see a new take on wind inflating daily.