Wk 4: 2/11 – 2/18

Emily Lin

a.) New dimensions and sketches after last week’s prototype: The dimensions of the form have been updated so that it is less wide. Below are some sketches of how I originally planned to build the bottom base of the stands.

b.) Getting the materials: The materials I use for this are extremely important to me. I wanted to find material that is either biodegradable or reused/reclaimed wood. Fortunately, the amazing Big Reuse had a load of this hardboard/pegboard material and reclaimed wood panels on sale! I wanted to use reclaim wood but there weren’t enough large sheets of the same thickness of wood. This flexible hardboard material is great, super cheap and biodegradable…but it did change my original building idea. I had to re-sketch and rethink how to go about building this piece using this hardboard/pegboard. Came up with this frame structure and have the pegboard act as panels.

c.) Starting building one of the stands: After seeing the materials that Big Reuse, I began building the frame for the bottom base of a stand. This frame structure is based on the cardboard prototype dimensions and my sketches.

d.) Complete teardown research: finished the first pass at researching all the components that make up my parent’s Lenovo G560 laptop. Teardown sheet lives here. Feeling good enough about content to better flush out the wireframe design for the ‘Birth’ Section.

e.) Update ‘Birth’ Section for wireframe: Now that the teardown research is a little more flushed out, I have redesigned this section’s website.

Invision of wireframe: here

f.) Create a user interaction diagram: thought it would make my life easier if I diagrammed the steps that I’d like people to take when interacting with this piece. Below is a diagram of the interaction flow.

Main goal for next week: finish the structure and basic interaction for the ‘Birth’ section. Get basic interaction of scanning the component to work so that people can try it out.

Questions: I’m still not sure what the future section should be exactly. The idea of laptop ashes in urn seems to be tonally off now and I’m not sure what I’m trying to say with that concept. The main point of this section is to have people speculate on betters ways to recycling electronics. The main takeaway is to reflect and rethink the current system. Below are two potential ideas that I’m hoping to get feedback on.

Wk 3: 2/5 -2/11

Emily Lin

For this week, I focused on a.) trying to get the RFID tags to work, b.) rough coding of the website, c.) updates to the form

a.) Trying to get RFID tags to work was easy enough. The hard part was trying to get the serial communication to work with the server side coding. As a first step, I tried to just get the tag name to show up using p5js + serial communication but I also ran into issues there. More updates on that to come.

b.) The initial coding of the website it coming along, but I’m still not sure about the design. I am thinking I might need to do another design sprint where I just try to make as many visual identities for this as possible. I also need to integrate the visual identity into the physical set up soon.

c.) Updates to the form. The screen needs to be placed higher up. The depth also needs to be deeper.

Coding Resources:

Code for this week:

Thank you!!!

Many thanks to Professor Shawn Van Every for helping with the RFID code issues. Problem solved as always!

Interactive Prototype – v2

Emily Lin

Sharing updates to the form. It keeps shape-shifting, but I really need to formalize it soon because building stuff takes time! The form below is getting closer to the ideal form (I think).

After thinking through the previous forms and getting feedback from very helpful people (i.e. Sarah, Nancy and Tom), I realized that the form needs to be: a.) easy to put together/modular, b.) circular in some way/ reflects a circular economy idea, and c.) consider the venues I hope to show it in (ex: libraries, conferences, pop-up in public spaces and educational centers)

The below sketches/ prototype try to address this criteria.

Interview with Environmental Service Group: Notes

Emily Lin

Notes: here

What I found out was:
The Environmental Service Group is actually a transfer facility. Sunnking sends their electronics with hazardous waste to the transfer facility.

  • Transfer facility:  ship it to wear it needs to go. Don’t actually store or get rid of it
  • station but they are not disposed of there
  • come in but sent out in bulk loads 
  •  Sunnking breaks down all the electronics and sends their electronics with hazardous waste to Environmental Service Group
  • 4 different facilities that they ship it out to Ohio and Michigan
  • How do the other places dispose of the hazardous waste?
    • a lot of hazardous waste gets incinerated
    • fuels blending, liquid injection, metal recovery
  • for hazardous waste – can only be stored up to 10 days. Within 10 days it has to be shipped.
  • all stored in DOT shipping containers (department of transportation)
  • They ship to: Environmental Enterprise Inc.
    • In Cincinnati, Ohio and Columbus, Ohio
    • Different disposal methods that they use
    • eeienv.com

Interactive Scenario – V2

Emily Lin

Update: form has changed so it is smaller in scale. However, the interaction is the same as I had previously proposed. The reason I changed the form from the previous concept sketch was because I figured out more context-related questions:

a. ) Where does this live?
Ideally this lives in a science museum or a public library but since I don’t think this will be the same scale of a science museum interactive, I am thinking this is more of a polished working prototype to pitch to a science museum like Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Liberty Science Center or NY Hall of Science. Given the time frame, I see my polished interactive prototype being shown at places such as the public library, education centers, STEAM after school places, recycling centers, LES Ecology Center.

b.) Is it a permanent installation somewhere?
I am hoping to pitch the concept and content of this interactive to museums or educational centers that might be interested. So perhaps this interactive is a smaller scale but communicates the message. It also has to be modular and easy to travel with if I want to bring it to many places. It’ll be better if it is smaller in scale as most likely it won’t be a permanent installation (unless I can find someone willing to sponsor it).

c.) Who is it for?
As many people as I can reach. Ideally, this interactive is for anyone who is over 13 years old. I can see this being something both 13 and 60 year olds could benefit from.