What Did We Miss

This will go over some of the improvements that I made that aren’t seen yet.

PT.1: Creative Ideation and Innovation & Interdisciplinary Integration and Application

At the end of this year, I am working on multiple projects that are involved in creativity and innovation. This includes a joint project with a friend of mine, where I designed a unique water jug and am planning to fabricate it using ceramics with the expertise of my friend. This is an interdisciplinary application of my STEM skills in art. My approach to this is influenced by Fusion, where I identified a problem and solved it using a creative approach.

– An image of the design

The problem in this case is that a lower handle position makes it easy to pour water out of a jug but hard to carry the jug, and the opposite when the handle position is high. This solution is based on the idea that the design, from the above perspective, looks like a standard vase cut from the middle and with one side flipped and glued back together with the original piece. As a result, if the left or right side is shown alone, they would look like half of a standard vase.

– The standard vase mentioned above.

I believe that my creativity and expression of it benefitted from the fusion experience, and that I demonstrate the ability to integrate my STEM skills into art and design.

PT.2: Fabrication and Implementation

Through the fusion experience, I became more well versed in the fabrication methods area. In the middle of the fusion year, I chose to purchase a 3D printer for my personal use in Shanghai, and have thus been more well versed in terms of setting up prints and fabricating CAD designs using a 3D printer. I also looked into other fabrication methods such as CNC machining and the machining costs for certain parts using CNC in a third party fabricator. I am also planning to fabricate some of my own designs that I have made using 3rd party CNC machining during the summer. I also got to know the benefits and downsides of all kinds of materials, including carbon fiber, aluminum, PLA, and much more. This meant that I am more well versed now than at the start of the fusion year when it comes to fabricating and implementing designs.

PT.3: Project Planning and Management

During the fusion year, I also applied and got into the STEM leadership program at UBC Geering Up. In this program, I am currently leading a team in that program that is responsible for making a design that helps to reach a UN development goal. Our team is focused on developmental goal number 13, regarding climate action. The strategy for our team when it comes to ideating and making decisions that I came up with is that we will first list out possible designs and ideas, and describe the problems that it solves. Next, we will find the convergency level for each of these ideas and identify if it has already been done or has been developed to near completion. Then, the ones that have a reasonable convergency level, where the design is mainly unconverging with other designs, are weighed based on criteria such as social impact, implementation difficulty, convergency, and relatability to the prompt, being climate action. Then, we will produce a final proposal. I learned from my fusion final project that assumptions should never be made when making decisions, and that convergencies need to be accurately pinpointed when evaluating ideas. This shows that I learned a lot from my Fusion experience and implemented it in projects such as the one I am working on with Geering Up.