Reflection: Flip Your Mind

Challenge

During the past months, I had enrolled on a Design Methodologies’ course in my university, in  which we are assigned many real-life problems in the industry, and we have to present innovative  and new ideas for the problem-solving. We were “hired” by a manufacturing company, who  needed the help of very creative engineers to design a mechanism or machine capable of flipping  or rotating 180 degrees a really large metal hoop used in their processes. No further information  was given rather its material and that the ring has big enough for it not to be flipped or rotated  by hand, and that the sky was our limit for possibilities for the solution.

Selection

The first tool I selected from this Design Thinking process was mind mapping. As I tend to be very  visual and creative, I believed this skill was going to be very well used. Mind mapping, as seen on  its corresponding video on week 3, is a tool that leads to creative solutions, many of them very  well perceived outside the box. This tool allows us to create patterns, establish goals, and creating  totally new outcomes. It is more intuitive than other tools and allows you to be as colorful and  visual as you please, making it the perfect tool for when designing a product that need a visual  representation.

Application

The process or application of this tool is rather simple but can evolve to great things. On the  center we find our goal, the mechanism or machine. Finding the first branches of investigation  really depends on the focus of each designer. For instance, mine revolved a lot around the  materials I had in hand, due to the pandemic, many materials were not available in my household  and could not just go shopping so easily. Another topic branched out as how I was going to create  the blueprints, I do have basic skills regarding CAD software, but time was limited and I not an  expert on it, so another choice was going over the old reliable paper and pencil technique for our  sketch. How can we not forget about the most important branch to point out, its purpose? What  is the purpose of the mechanism? Its to either flip, rotate, or transport to such way the ring is  180 degrees from its initial state.

When creating this mechanism for the company’s usage, we have to consider all engineering  tools and stages its must foresee. For instance, all the circuits and control systems, as well as  pneumatics and all the mechanics behind it, and let’s not leave behind its automatization toolbox  for it to work properly. Finally, our mind map is almost done, we add few ideas or key words to  each branch, such as in the materials we paste a picture of sticks, rubber bands, circuit boards,  and more, on the purpose we can add a picture of the ring being flipped. Just with this pictures

and color coding our mind map, we create a very visual flow on how the project is or will be  carried out. I am adding a screenshot of m mind map for visual purposes only.

Insight

From this project I have learned not be controlled over by the bias of standard manufacturing, to  always seek for new ways to operate and think outside the box. I do believe there are many ways  to create different designs for this exercise. Through this graphic representation it is easy to gain  insights about the relationship regarding engineering techniques to be applied and the tools  available not only for this project but even on the country, we have to consider those limitations  as well. New insights about design and what a customer wants and how this too are linked are  also gained, as during this project we had the liberty of creating many designs, in real life it could  not be that way and we need to adapt and understand those conditions.

Approach

I believe the tool was very well applied and did go by the hand of creativity given the project. A  different approach for this same tool might have been taking into consideration more limitations  by the customer and creating a new whole mind map regarding those terms. We could be talking  about budget, technology application, rough materials, and many more. However, for this  opportunity where we had a lot of freedom over the design, mind mapping was a strong and well  executed tool. I am also attaching below pictures of the mockup machine created, hope you like  it.

