Kinetic Design Thinking Project Reflection by Taiki Chung ('18)
For this kinetic design thinking project, my invention aims to improve the level of cleanliness in New York City. Specifically, my invention works as a building sprinkler and washes the tall skyscrapers of New York City. When coming up with this project during the ideation phase, many things were going through my mind. I was thinking what made New York special and different from other places in the world. I made a list of the positive things that made it unique and a list of negative aspects as well. Among my positive list were things like New York style pizza, Skyscrapers, tourists etc. Among the negative aspects were inefficient subway system, smells horrid in certain places, very windy near rivers, cleanliness etc. This negative aspects list eventually developed into a list of problems that I saw around New York. I thought about my interactions with those problems and I decided that cleanliness in New York was an issue that I most wanted to fix. (A trip to Japan came into mind, where it is just so clean, and I really enjoyed staying in a location that was clean) Before choosing any sort of solution though, I also thought of the many aspects that made New York unique. As an insider, I imagined going through my day and tried to recall the aspects of New York I found fascinating. An initial idea finally sparked when I thought of the Empire State Building, an iconic New York City landmark. Then I realized that I could find a way to connect the two ideas. I live in a 50 floor apartment building and although it is not as tall as the Empire State Building, it does have similarities. With the problem that I wanted to tackle in mind(cleanliness) and a unique aspect of New York in mind as well, I tried to connect the two. Quite honestly, I was having trouble. I was trying to just write out any idea that popped into my head, and I had a lot, but none that I wanted to pursue.
One day, over winter break, I noticed that there were workers that were cleaning the building, but because it was so tall, they had to use a machine to bring them down and up. Per window, it looked to take them about a minute to spray cleaning solution/soap water, and then use a squeegee to wipe the solution off. The spraying took about half the time the squeegeeing did. I kept thinking about how I could make that process more efficient. Finally, a light bulb shined in my mind when the window cleaner had to go back up to the top floor to refill his soap water solution to clean more windows. I decided to focus on making the building cleaning process more efficient by doing the first step of spraying the solution for the cleaners.
Afterwards I began to build my idea. I wanted a way to spread soapy water, so I first thought of using simple harmonic motion and springs. I played with that concept for a bit, but I could not think of a reasonable and feasible method of getting solution to every window. I then looked back through my notes and I glanced at one of the bonus questions on one of the physics presentations. It had to do with a washing machine and how it worked. This is when I knew I could combine the mechanics of a washing machine with a solution to spray it all over a building. I next drew an initial blueprint that looked similar to the drawings on the second page of my blueprints. I realized that the tubes need to be angled towards the building or no solution would come into contact with it. So I played around with a couple angles and decided 30 degrees down made sense. Then, I imagined myself as a building owner. Would I use this product that I was making? Not yet, at this point, with only 1 tube sticking out of a water source, the product would not clean parts of the building close to the product. I decided that adding multiple tubes to the water source would best solve that problem because it already follows the same principle as the first tube while solving my problem of reaching parts of the building close to the device. When I thought, as a building owner, that I would buy this product, I knew I was close to finalizing it.
Overall, I really really loved this project and the process. Of course I am doing an independent study on the design thinking process as well, but something about trying make something that solves a problem really excites me. Also, the physical creation of the products was very interesting for me, but I luckily created it with very few issues. If I could add on to this project, I would try to build a prototype that actually uses water, so I could test if my product would work when attached to a building. I would also ask my building supervisor/owner to get immediate feedback on my product and get insight on how to improve it. My product itself is a very simple one that does not require amazingly high levels of science to create, which is what I think makes the product so powerful. I believe it efficiently solves part of the New York cleanliness problem while making the lives of building cleaners much easier.
One day, over winter break, I noticed that there were workers that were cleaning the building, but because it was so tall, they had to use a machine to bring them down and up. Per window, it looked to take them about a minute to spray cleaning solution/soap water, and then use a squeegee to wipe the solution off. The spraying took about half the time the squeegeeing did. I kept thinking about how I could make that process more efficient. Finally, a light bulb shined in my mind when the window cleaner had to go back up to the top floor to refill his soap water solution to clean more windows. I decided to focus on making the building cleaning process more efficient by doing the first step of spraying the solution for the cleaners.
Afterwards I began to build my idea. I wanted a way to spread soapy water, so I first thought of using simple harmonic motion and springs. I played with that concept for a bit, but I could not think of a reasonable and feasible method of getting solution to every window. I then looked back through my notes and I glanced at one of the bonus questions on one of the physics presentations. It had to do with a washing machine and how it worked. This is when I knew I could combine the mechanics of a washing machine with a solution to spray it all over a building. I next drew an initial blueprint that looked similar to the drawings on the second page of my blueprints. I realized that the tubes need to be angled towards the building or no solution would come into contact with it. So I played around with a couple angles and decided 30 degrees down made sense. Then, I imagined myself as a building owner. Would I use this product that I was making? Not yet, at this point, with only 1 tube sticking out of a water source, the product would not clean parts of the building close to the product. I decided that adding multiple tubes to the water source would best solve that problem because it already follows the same principle as the first tube while solving my problem of reaching parts of the building close to the device. When I thought, as a building owner, that I would buy this product, I knew I was close to finalizing it.
Overall, I really really loved this project and the process. Of course I am doing an independent study on the design thinking process as well, but something about trying make something that solves a problem really excites me. Also, the physical creation of the products was very interesting for me, but I luckily created it with very few issues. If I could add on to this project, I would try to build a prototype that actually uses water, so I could test if my product would work when attached to a building. I would also ask my building supervisor/owner to get immediate feedback on my product and get insight on how to improve it. My product itself is a very simple one that does not require amazingly high levels of science to create, which is what I think makes the product so powerful. I believe it efficiently solves part of the New York cleanliness problem while making the lives of building cleaners much easier.
