Whale Shark
I have worked very hard internally and externally in life to get to a point where I truly believe that I can be great at anything that I set my mind to.
Through this project, I learned that I was wrong.
As a scuba diver, whale sharks have always been a personal favorite of mine. I got to see one when I did my advanced open water certification and remembered being mesmerized. They are hands down my favorite endangered species and I love that they are gentle peaceful filter feeders that live over 100 years. There is something very spiritual about them.
They are also the world's largest fish.
I was 3D printing a whale shark model to use as a decoration. I took inspiration from the 3D rig of the .stl file to use in a sectional design.
I got an email from the idm soft lab saying that they had a recycling/scrap fabric bucket and so I decided I wanted to do this entire project on recycled fabric.
The fabrics I found were: a cotton blend fabric, a tablecloth, a reflective fleece (this reminded me of the actual skin of a whale shark that I could not touch due to the oils in our hands), something from a beige crotched item, a silver plastic of sorts, a nyu graduation tie, neoprene (like scuba suits) and black breathable nylon.
I drew out each section on paper and used it to trace cut the fabric around. This was stupid because both the paper and fabric was floppy. I should have used cardboard.
Once I had all the sections cut, I reused and stuffed all the scrap paper inside each section to give it some volume. Then I stapled it shut because it turns out I had thread but no needle.
Since I had thread and no needle I used old hair ties that were about to be thrown out to tie the sections together.
Lastly, my idea did not go as planned for the dorsal fins as they wouldn't stand up so I ended up having to use cardboard from my amazon packages.
Reading Response:
I want to focus on the topic of affordances and messy designs this week (I also think I did the wrong reading last week). Affordances, especially sequential, were rarely thought about when I started doing what I do now. It wasn't until I began working with interaction design that this really became important. As someone from some background of film, interactions present themselves as narratives. Good sequential affordances should play like a good narrative. Could it have multiple endings? yes but if done right one thing should lead to the next in such a seamless manner that it may almost constitute as foreshadowing.
This brings me to the idea of messy sketches being more powerful than some polished design. The messiness of an early draft holds the full potential of the design in its entirety before being stripped away to serve a specific purpose. I love that. I like that a design can have options. I like that it can "grow" and have multiple paths to grow on. I find that this is often why we step back from a polished design because it just doesn't feel as fulfilling as when the idea sparked.