Reverse Brainstorming

This week we had a guest lecturer, Eugene Shteyn, come in to hold a reverse brainstorming workshop. Each group had to list out 100 specific problems their project faced. Then each person from the group picked out ten short term problems and 10 long term problems that they thought were the most valuable ones to tackle. Next we looked at the overlap of everyone's choices to find our most critical challenges. My group struggled with the exercise a little. We made it up to about 76 problems but it was a lot of rewording of what we already had and we had a hard time listing out things specifically. Our design has a long way to go. I think one of the issues is that even though we are all in agreement about the concept - an interactive installation that also monitors human activity for security purposes - none of us have a clear idea about what that should look like.
I think the reverse brainstorming did help us in the sense that we were able to define a lot of our problems and see what concerned everyone the most but at the same time it was quite overwhelming to be faced with a giant list of problems. Some (most?) are not easily fixed and some we can not fix at all. Things that concern us are: what form our project will take, if people will respond to it, how will this device use/collect energy, how do we make this weather proof/thief proof, how do we display the information gathered, how do we make it repairable, and how do we actually get this done in the days we have left.
We began to tackle this list of problems by grouping items together to further break it down and then going back through the condensed version and separating problems vs concerns. Problems are fixable things and concerns are things we can't necessarily fix but that we should keep in mind while designing our project.
My biggest concern for the project is how people will react to it- will they enjoy it, will they be annoyed by it, will the novelty wear off in a few months, can we make it meaningful to them? To address some of these concerns I am going back to Hamtramck to talk to some of the people in the community. Without the input of people in the neighborhood I feel like we would be starting this project backwards. Hopefully I can get a better idea of what they will respond to most during this visit.
Another big concern of everyone's was if we were being too ambitious and what if we can't get this project done. We have come to the consensus that we should push ourselves to create something that actually works early on and then spend the rest of the semester fine tuning and improving upon it.

Final Teams

The highlight of this week was definitely going to the Powerhouse and getting a sense of the community surrounding it. We also got put into our final teams. Perhaps there's no good way to pick final teams but I found these pairing to be very strange in the mix of disciplines. In the first weeks each team always had a decent mix of architects, engineers and art students but in these last groups the ratios are very off. One team has three art students, another four architects. I wish they were more dispersed like before. My group has three architects, one engineer and two art students (myself included).
My group met once to discuss how things would be run. We all seemed to be interested in different aspects of the project, which is good because we can get an all-around developed project. We also decided we wanted to refine and develop the security monitoring installation or "smartfence." I would like to make something very site specific, something that will have a lasting impact on the community instead of a fleeting novelty effect. I proposed to the group that some, if not all of us, go back to Detroit and meet some of the people in the neighborhood so we can get a sense of what they want and need. In this way we can make the project more meaningful to us and to them. Perhaps the couple at the Powerhouse could put us in touch with a couple of the families so they knew we were coming and we could talk to them right away. I'm still waiting to hear back about if people can go or not but I think I will still try to make the trip happen regardless of how many people can make it. 
I hope everything in my group runs smoothly. I don't foresee any problems right now and we all seemed to be very individually motived to make this happen to the best of our abilities     

Week 4- heat, sliding, annually

This week the pressure was on to create a polished, thought-through project to present to the powerhouse. Instead of scrapping the old idea for something new we forced ourselves to examine what we had inherited and refine it. It seems like refining an idea would be a lot easier than coming up with something new but this was honestly the most challenging task. One of the biggest problems with the project was that it looked really really ugly. We all wanted to change the design but struggled to integrate visual spectacle with a not so glamourous passive solar water heater. Our group actually fought a lot about it and made little progress. Every new design idea seemed like an add on and no one was satisfied. On top of this the previous group handed us fried servos so we had to use two of the baby ones, which can't move much. Another problem was using copper tubing. We were well aware that copper was like gold to thieves and we wanted to add a level of security to our product. We added aluminum flaps that covered the device at night and then are used as reflective panels during the day. All in all we made something that was highly functional but not spectacular and not much to differentiate it from existing products. I was personally disappointed in myself for not being able to meet the design challenge.   
I loved going to see the actual powerhouse. It put everything in perspective and we learned a lot about the client and the neighborhood. I was surprised to learn it was a predominantly Bangledesh immigrant neighborhood. I wish we had started the semester by going to talking to the people at the powerhouse and listening to their wants and concerns. I think we all would have had an easier time creating products that they actually needed and something that fit the community. Now I feel like we're starting from square one again with all this new information.