(Smart) prototyping by Kotryna Valečkaitė

As the final working week begins, we must decide what precisely our explorations in production methods will lead to. In the beginning of the project our supervisor Maaike said that the priority and goal of the project was to “revive” chosen historical objects. She did not specify how leaving us to decide what it is supposed to be. As seen in the first post, we took the task very directly, thinking that filling the holes in different methods will bring the most successful results. After four weeks it is clear that archaeological ceramics can not only regain their original use, but also become a game or a party attribute. Therefore, it is essential that we decide how these ideas can be smartly introduced to our peers and supervisors: interaction and functionality being the first priorities.

To begin with, we would like to introduce the cup as a relatively cheap party attribute. Last week we strove for two solutions: paper printing and vacuum forming. Only the latter could come into life, but as it is, the cup could be called a high fidelity prototype for cold beverages containment.

Secondly, the cup as an interactive object. The idea behind this is rather simple: providing the user with a kit consisting of cup shards and color-able glue, both child-safe and heat resistant. Interpretation of the objects would vary with the user: it could be interpreted as a DIY project, treasure hunt for children or possibly an exercise object for amateur archaeologists. For the presentation we will have the shards and the glued cup ready for the exposition, making it again a high fidelity prototype.

Another idea, consisting of two solutions, is to restore the original function of the cup. The first silver bullet was to underline the cracks by making them in different material. In the end we decided on rubber, which gives a rather pleasant feeling for the cup bu making it partially flexible. The second solution is at least 70% rubber, which makes the flexibility a problem. Due to that, an inner structure is introduced, making it possible to implement very interesting spacial compositions. The latter cannot be fully explored before the end of the project, but a simplified version will be given to explain the main idea. In other words, during the science fair we will present the structure prints instead of two material prints: the cost of rapid prototyping in 2 materials is too high for research models. As for the first idea, the design is almost complete and therefore these costs can be justified.

Hope to see you in the science fair on the 27th of October, 12:00 in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft, Stevinweg 1, 2628 CN Delft.