Fourth Year: Various Woes

I ended last week on a high from assembling my products and they are successfully working. A weekend at home was spent taking pictures and recording the video for the final presentation next week and for accompanying the press release. Everything is almost complete. I think that I should get finished by the middle of the week. Actually scrap that, I feel as though I can get everything finished by Tuesday. Don’t hold me to it though.

Despite the relative success of last week, a flaw that has occurred has put a dampener onto the weekend. The paint finish on the white one, even though it wasn’t too good in the first place has gotten even worse. It isn’t too obvious and it is only affecting one side but it is fairly serious if it develops even further. Around the USB port on the white product, cracks are appearing. Each of the four corners has a crack coming from it and if they do get any worse there is a chance that it will cause the paint to come off. This was after the assurance from the spray factory that the paint was “bombproof”. Thankfully, the white one is the one that most of the attention will not be on. It doesn’t have any Arduinos in it so it doesn’t work. But it is annoying nonetheless.

Something else that hasn’t gone quite right is to do with the cables. I ordered 2 USB male to male cables last week so the product could be connected to a computer or a wall adapter. When they arrived, instead of being white, like what I wanted them to be, they were black. I am going to have to order more in the hope that they arrive before I box up the product mid week. I would have kept the black if the plugs were black, but because the plugs are white, I am wanting the usb cables to be white so they match.

At the moment there are no other issues (touch wood), but it is early days yet. I am not going to let my projects out of my sight this coming week, just to be sure they are not tampered with, poked at, or just plain abused by anybody else.

Final Phase 2 Reflection

So here we are at the end of phase 2.

There have been many positives and many negatives in the whole process. However, I am going to try and summarise them all up as best as I can in the this post without rambling on too much.

So the positives, commence the bullet point list:

• It actually works. There was always some niggling doubt in the back of my mind that I wouldn’t really have managed to make this work or if I did, it wouldn’t really have been very good at all. The basics of the idea/code are
• There are two of them. I didn’t set out to make two. In fact I only made two just in case one of them was messed up.
• I actually made it and attempted to make it all myself.
• It has a good design that I think was very difficult to achieve. The simpler the design usually means the more difficult it is to make.
• It looks quite good, albeit from a distance. However there is a piece of me that says I should have made it out of the cardboard in the same way that my mark 1 prototype was.
• I am partial to a good piece of packaging. I don’t know if that have been obvious from the past lot of posts (yup, that’s sarcasm). I think that the packaging adds to my project in that it makes my project more believable as a commercial venture. It also sums me up as a designer ( I think it does anyway). Thinking of the process from start to finish and not giving up until there is at least something how I want it, or going in the direction I want it. I never had an easter holiday, I basically have been working constantly since January. It might not seem it on the surface but I have. So… yes, the main subject of this bullet point is thinking about the project even further than just the project, thinking about packaging, manufacturing, usability, etc.
• It. Just. Works. Three words that are often touted in Apple Keynotes. But it was something that I wanted my product to do. I wanted it to just work. No pointless controls. No micromanagement by the user. No external controls. Just put your phone in and go. It just works! Giving the user too many things to think about, especially in a product that is to be used when they are going to bed is silly. Over stimulation of the brain will keep you up late into the night. I didn’t want any of that, so I didn’t give it any of that.

I am not going to do much of a negative list. I don’t think this is the right time to do this. It is too soon from getting it finished. I want to give it a good month or so as to not make the post too bias, but I will put together a short list anyway:

• The fit and finish of some of the parts. The spray factory let me down with the finish of the paint (including forgetting to paint a bit of it) and it has left me feeling a bit unhappy with the way it has turned out. The join between the plastic part and the coloured parts are also not too good. I couldn’t find anywhere that did thicker acrylic and if they did it would have been far too expensive. The join and the fact that you can see some parts of the join through the block. If I could have done it differently, I would have probably tried to get a slightly bigger piece of plastic, irrespective of cost, and mill out the edges of the top and bottom so it fitted snugly. I have solutions to all the problems but just not the capability to have achieved them myself or in the timescale left from when they happened.
• The fact that I wasted so much time trying to paint the project myself.
• I would probably say that making it in the layered fashion that I had done was a mistake too. It took far too long to cut the bits out, glue them, and sand it to the right size. It was about five weeks instead of the 5 days or so that it would have taken to do it in a more conventional way. In fact, in hindsight, I would have wanted someone else to have made it for me. I’m going to openly admit my strong point isn’t making. Doing things on the computer is fine and making quirky things that only I’ll use, yes, making something that is of a high enough quality that I think it will be marked well, probably not. I am likely being too cynical here though, I’m going to blame this on the fact that the making has just finished for me.
• My timetable didn’t go to plan. Maybe I was over ambitious. I don’t know. It seemed reasonable. The painting problem however, was a rubbish and the 2 and a half weeks wasted was my problem so there was time I didn’t get back…

I don’t want to go into much more detail, but as it is the negative list went on longer than I wanted. As I’ve mentioned, it isn’t something that necessarily should be discussed right away. Moving on, there are still some things that need to be done. There isn’t much but hopefully they can get done over the weekend.

• One great image (idea got, just need to do it)
• Video (idea got, just need to do it)

The Press release is done, and will be posted on here as soon as I have the 1 great image up. The video will be done after the photographs have been taken. I don’t really see it as essential to the press release to start off with but the sooner I can get it done the better. The packing of the box and sealing of it will be done early-mid next week and will not be touched or opened again until the presentation the following week. Next week I will publish my thoughts on manufacturing and other details like that along with putting it on my portfolio website, a republishing of my 100 words on here, my press release on here, my one great image,my video and finally but not essentially, a list of acknowledgements.

Fourth Year: Plugs

At the start of the week it was brought to my attention that instead of using cheapo standard plugs for my project, I should use something a bit nicer. One the award winning folding plugs. A quick look online later and I had bought two.

Called MU, it is a USB adapter (other versions are coming soon such as for a laptop charger). In short it is pretty amazing. On top of that it comes in some gorgeous packaging. I know the plugs will not necessarily be shown during the degree show but I think that if the product was put into production, it would be a good looking plug, perhaps a licensed version of MU. I am going to cover all this sort of thing in a post next week, looking at manufacturing, mass production and the likes, summing up what I have been thinking about them in general over the past few months, finishing off my project has taken precedence at the moment.

Finally Some Room

Since the start of Phase 1 the amount of cardboard on my desk has been rising and rising. It wasn’t a mess per se, but it was a bit cluttered. My early start yesterday provided a good chance to change all that, and after filling up the paper bin and the normal bin before the day had even properly started, I have a clean desk. There is some things still on it, mainly card prototypes but you know it is much better than it was.

I kind of wish I had a before and after shot now…

Fourth Year: Some Images

With both of the products finished, I wanted to get some decent shots, or see if I could get some decent studio shots of my projects before they are boxed up and sealed before the presentation. Camera in hand I went through to the rapidly declining photography studio at the back of the electronics workshop next to the studio. These are by no means high quality or my one great image but they really are for my own personal use and are of a record. 

I am going to retake them again, probably tomorrow. The one thing that I am worrying about is that the studio shots that I took today, highlight the flaws. In a way it makes me feel quite ashamed about it, and I know that there isn’t time to fix it anymore, but it is something that I am now going to have to live with… hmmm

Anyway, onto the pictures.

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Fourth Year: Code Sorted & a Successful Morning

After the general disappointment of yesterday where things didn’t seem to be going right at all, today was a completely different kettle of fish. My fourth 8 o’clock start in the studio this week meant that I could go in early and try and rectify things that hadn’t quite gone to plan. The first thing to try and achieve was the coding. It only needed slight adjustments but it was way beyond my control and I was out of my depth by quite some way.

Thankfully, Ro Ramtohul, who is without a doubt an arduino magician as far as I can make out, helped me sort my code in just over an hour, which I was dead chuffed with. The changes that were made that makes it better and much more believable are as follows:

• When the phone is removed from the product, the mood light fades out almost instantaneously, compared to when I was trying it and it it faded out after that cycle.
• After a certain amount of time of the phone being in the product, the mood light will automatically turn off. This will likely be about half an hour, as on average, people get to sleep within 20 minutes. My original code couldn’t stop it… at all. So it would just loop continuously when the phone was in the device.

It was really only those two parts that needed fixed. But I am massively grateful to Ro for helping, as I am sure most other people in the class are for his assistance in their programming times of need.

The photograph below is just a glimpse into what the insides look like. I am not going to show you the rest, mainly because you cant see as it is very tightly packaged and it is just wires… everywhere.

With the coding sorted, I could finally get on with assembling the black one completely. I painted the edges that end up touching the light prism white because they do not show up as much when they are joined. I can’t remember if I have already mentioned this but no matter how I try and join the pieces together, there will always be bits which look untidy.

The photograph below shows the mood light working in test right before the parts were joined together. It will be quite difficult, but doable, to take them apart again.

ANYWAY. The parts were joined together and I set about just keeping my phone in it all day, doing continuous testing. It still works. And I am hoping that with the weekend at home I can further test it by doing some user testing and whatnot.

It wasn’t just the coding and the joining together that was successfully managed today. Here is a brief list of what else I managed to achieve:

• cut out new and tidy slips for the boxes
• cut out little boxes (that were finally the right size and cut right to fit together properly) that fit the cable, plug etc
• made the boxes up and glued them
• tidied up my test and swept underneath it

All in all it was a good day.

Fourth Year: More Packaging Thoughts

Continuing on from the packaging theme of recent posts, I am going to continue on with them. I am a strong believer that a good piece of packaging helps to sell the product and make aim towards the right sort of target market.

One of the things that I was talking about in my last post was the slips that are going to be going round the boxes which help determine what colour the product is on the inside. The photo below shows one of the boxes with one of the spare slips wrapped around it. That is basically going to be it in terms of appearance. I don’t want anything too complicated. Just nice and simple, as per what the product is designed to be like. In a way, it just works.

Black Version Progress

With the white version finished, how is the black version coming along? Of course this is the one that is going to have the working electronics inside of it. I managed to shoehorn the electronics into it only to have to remove them later on to fix some of the code that was being a bit problematic.

Once I fix another piece of code in the coming days, I will stick it all together, but for the time being the two halves will remain separate. The tones of the black version match the iPhone quite closely which is a plus. However, it is yet to be seen how close the white one is to its phone counterpart. The details regarding the paint finish are still worrying me but I will still have to see how it ends up. It will receive a good polishing in the next couple of days.

Fourth Year: White One Finished

A relatively productive morning ended up with the white product being finished. This was not as big a deal as it sounds as it was chosen to be the one that was not to have working electronics embedded into it.

Thinking about it, it was the right choice to make the white one the one with no electronics in it. However, both will be presented at the final thing in a few weeks time. I just have to prepare the other parts such as the box etc whilst I am waiting. The white one will still be photographed as soon as I manage to go home and pinch use of my sisters white iPhone.

Fourth Year: Completed Booklet

More than seven attempts at it later, I can finally say that the accompanying booklet has been finished. The main problem that I was having was that I couldn’t get the staples exactly in the right place. But it has been done and it is looking good.

I may still make another one or two just so they are crisp for putting into the box.