Materials
Selecting the right materials for building prototypes is a balance of:- What do you need to demonstrate?
- How fast can you build this prototype?
You don't have to spend money to get the idea across:
DESIGN PROCESS
After you have an idea about what you want to make, present that idea in web format. Explain your ideas by writing a short Statement of Intent—basically a few sentences about what you want to make and why. It is a great way of focusing thoughts and forms the basis for a design brief.The following headings will help as a guide to the sort of things to think about:
- Who is the audience? A young child, a teenager
or an adult etc?
- What size will it be?
- Simple or complex? Will you use
cams, gears or cranks or a
combination of them?
- What materials do you want to work
with?
Paper, wood, or metal. Often you
will work with a range of materials.
- Deadlines: How long have you got?
Design Notes
Sketch out ideas. For more complex projects, it is often easier to break down all the movements and electronics and design the mechanisms individually. When this is done you can then work out how to join the whole thing together.It is helpful to make accompanying notes as well. The reason for this is that what appears to be very simple and straightforward can often turn out to be confusing and complex when looked at a week later. A few accompanying notes can help to explain and make sense of a drawing.
You may find that none of your initial ideas were suitable, in which case a modification or combination of ideas can be put together to provide a workable solution. Developing the work is a vital part of the design process. Taking an idea and developing it into a final solution is the very essence of the design process.
You can make the illustrations in Photoshop or flash, or on paper and then scan them in.