Blue sky project part 1: building stuff

I never expected to hear myself saying this but, I created an invention! That’s correct with help from friends family and my teachers, my class and my self all were able to create an invention! The goal of this project was to create a invention that was important to us and we thought could help people. Since choosing what to make is a hard decision my class had to follow something called the LAUNCH journal. This is a booklet that guides you through the different steps of innovation.

This booklet had us questioning, understanding and navigating ideas and other peoples preferences. Not till the very end did we actually create and fix our project. The LAUNCH journal for me was really difficult to follow. I found it too structured for me since everything had to be done in an order. What I did like about the LAUNCH journal was that if I had done this on my own I would have forgot to ask other people who would be affected by this product what their insight was. Other than that I found that at some points in the LAUNCH journal I would be urging to go ahead to the next step but then sometimes I would be falling behind. I did not like the structure to the LAUNCH journal because I wanted to create at my own pace. My actual product that I ended up wanting to create was a slide for your stairs. I wanted it to be kind of like a camping mat in that you could roll it up and was light and easily portable. This was my big picture idea,

I had thought that someone could be supported going down the stairs but still be  able to roll up a mat. The problem with my design was that really no material could support weight and be rolled up it was just impossible! I new that my design wasn’t going to work after I made two prototypes (each of them failed) vid. As you can see the first prototype just failed miserably, I honestly don’t know how I thought it would work!

I knew I had to change things for my second prototype. I changed the tarp with a more slippery one and I used a camping mat for more sturdy ness rather than cushions.

This second prototype worked much better than the last but it wasn’t something I was proud of. I didn’t want to show this in front of people and them think “a kid made that” I wanted people to be excited and amazed at a slide that I had made. If I wanted to achieve that goal I had to change my idea. With some help from my dad we re-thought the design and focused more on the structure of the slide rather than the portability. Here is how it turned out!

This was something that I was proud of, it wasn’t just a school project it was something that I could actually use! I progressed from a slide that was  mash of cushions to a real slide for your stairs!

I think that this project really taught me how to give up on a design and just move on to build something that might be totally different from what you had planned! I am proud to show my friends and family what I have built and I think if you’re not proud with something then there’s always a way to fix it!

Thank you for reading!

-Kira!