Exercise 1: Flying Object

The first exercise is an Iterative Physical Prototyping exercise. The aim of this exercise is to investigate the iterative design process using non-digital tools and techniques on a highly simplified design problem.

The problem is as follows:

• Design a flying object made of A4 paper. Your design must start with your core idea or concept for the design. This is your creative leap, a moment where past experience and intuition result in some new possibilities... Note that the flying object does not necessarily need to be a plane. It can be like a floating object, or it can spin as you drop it,... Some seeds float in the wind in interesting ways.
• Create a developmental diagram for the design. This diagram should specify parameters that can be vary within a certain range. Different designs can then be generated by specifying different values for the parameters.
  
• Create a evaluation diagram for the design. The evaluation diagram will specify certain performance criteria. These performance criteria can then be used to calculate the fitness of the design relative to other designs. Possible performance criteria could be distance travelled, time in the air, number of loops, maximum height, ... etc.
  

Once you have created your diagrams, you then need to start the process of generating and testing different design variants. After a while you may find that your original idea is not working so well, and that you have some new ideas. In such a case, you can update the diagrams, and then start generating and testing new variants.

The deadline for this exercise is Monday 25th January. This is a group exercise - so get into groups of 2 or 3. Your final presentation should focus on the process - so we want to see a series of diagrams, and for each diagram, a set of variants. Try and map out what happened, and why you made certain decisions.

Another aspect of this exercise is to start practicing generating clear diagrams. The diagrams need to be as clear and simple as possible. I.e.  - there should be nothing on the diagram that is superfluous. The best way to learn these type of graphic skills is to copy other people - look at other diagrams such as origami. Also, some architects also use diagrams in an interesting way - e.g. look at BIG | Bjarke Ingels Group