Project: Take Shape
Week One Newsletter
8-31-2012
Week One – The Formation
The MAKESHOP project for the fall of 2012 is officially underway. On Monday our team of six gentlemen, Ryan Hall, Kevin Primm, Andy Roxby, Dan Lin, Kai-Hsin Liu and Sean McChesney, gathered in our second floor project room eager to begin the process toward creating an exciting new exhibit for a local museum.
Throughout the semester we will be working with our client, Lisa Brahms from the MAKESHOP, a division of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. We are tasked with developing a hands-on and interactive exhibit for children ages five and up to learn the basic principles of 3D modeling. We will be the third group from the Entertainment Technology Center to complete a project in conjunction with the MAKESHOP so, in order to stand apart, we will officially be named ‘Take Shape’ within the ETC.
One of the first meetings we had was to designate our team members’ roles for the project. Kevin Primm is the team’s Visual Designer; Dan Lin is our Art Director; Ryan Hall is the Experience Designer; Andy Roxby is the Interaction Programmer; Kai-Hsin Liu is our Technologist; Sean McChesney is the Producer; Shirley Saldamarco is our faculty adviser.
In our first week we have focused on “Blue Sky” brainstorming to gather as many potential visual styles, hardware for both input and output, as well as themes for the overall experience. By visiting the MAKESHOP we were able to tour the space and take in the awesome potential of what our project can become. We are inspired by the contrasting colors in the space that separated structural aspects against those that the children are encouraged to interact with. The main style of structural objects are bare wood, raw materials and classic Pittsburgh steel left unpainted while the children’s learning tools are awash with bright colors, invitingly smooth shapes and pictures that represents the greater meaning of a certain piece of technology.
Work has begun on our team logo that will be distributed across all forms of promotional material we will be making within the next few weeks. The most used promotional piece will be our half sheets; a small, pamphlet-sized informational card that will have our team name, group members, adviser and our deliverable statement outlining the projects intent.
Unfortunately we were unable to meet with our client within the first week although we will be getting together early in the week. We have developed a few directions on certain deliverables, various forms of a take-away and single versus multi-user experiences but have some very key questions that we will be counting on our client to set straight.
Although we have not met with our client thus far, the individuals working at the MAKESHOP during our visit were all extremely helpful, enthusiastic about their jobs and our future involvement in adding a new experience to their space. We look forward to working with a well-established facility and to providing a great service of which students of the ETC are well known and accustomed to delivering.