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Intro
As Kathleen was in charge of Magnificent Makers management, she prepared a timeline, learning outcomes and wrote down the brief. We met 1st year Product Design students when we met Chelsea. However, we didn’t have a chance to talk or even get to know their names before.
From the beginning, we knew that this part of the project was going to be challenging. We were supposed to mentor people who were only a few years younger than us. We began with introducing the brief. We reminded them what Little Inventors does as an organisation and explained that this is the first time this kind of a project is happening in Scotland. That means big expectations, but also big opportunities. They didn’t have many occasions to work for a real client before. And children are very demanding, especially in that case, when the students were supposed to make their original ideas real. Basing on our experience, we tried to explain to them, how important it is to execute kid's ideas, taking ownership of their designs at the same time. They weren’t simply recreating the idea. They had to reinvent it, give it a new life.
We set the following learning outcomes:
Maker profile - As it is very important in the designer’s work to present your development work, we asked them to record their process by using a tool available on the Little Inventors website. I created a step by step tutorial on how to set up and use a Maker Profile.
Prototype - As we didn’t really have a budget for this project and we didn’t want the students to go broke, we encouraged them to think outside the box and upcycle existing products.
Presentation - As we knew their work was going to be displayed at the exhibition, we had to make sure that each student would prepare a presentation piece. We gave them a broad choice to not to limit their imagination and to not put too much pressure on them in such a short time. We asked them to choose between a board, a storyboard, an animation and motion graphics.
Because we had 4 classes at the school that were inventing for 4 different continents, we decided to split the students between 4 groups. This way, Jordan, Lara, Kathleen and I stayed within the topic, we already knew and each of us became a mentor to a group representing 1 continent.
My group was Joe, Jack, Adrian and Patrycja.
As a first task, we went through all the invention drawings for South America and chose the best ones that could be made real. At this stage, I didn’t ask them to choose one each yet. I wanted them to think about it over the weekend. Even though I already knew which inventions are the most likely to be made real, it was difficult to reject the others.
Next, we moved on to quick brainstorming exercise. We asked the students to choose one rejected drawing and make a plan for how it could be made real. Working in a team, they had to think about materials and processes, ways of presenting it at the exhibition and timeline. It was just a warm-up.
First week
We had to work quickly as we only had a few weeks before the students moved on to another project. That’s why for the 1st week’s session we asked them to prepare a 1:10 model of their invention and an A3 board with development sketches.
Knowing that we have very little time, I was quite frustrated when only 2 members of my group showed up. I finally knew how the lecturers must feel.
During the session, we showed the students videos that we recorded at the school. On these videos, kids were saying a bit more about their inventions and how they work. It was also a good opportunity for the makers to get to know their clients. We hoped that they could meet in person at the exhibition to exchange their ideas and opinions about the project.
Second week
Moving fast, that week was a deadline for a final model. At least, that is what we told the students. We knew that the models might not be finished, but we wanted to motivate them to do as much as they could in a short time. This way they still had time to make some corrections before the real deadline. Most of them showed up with almost finished models, but there were only 2 students from my group again. I had to be careful to not to jump to conclusions, but I felt a bit disappointed.
Jordan, Lara, Kathleen and I showed them some examples of how to present the work. I have to say, it felt funny to watch a stop motion I made in the 1st year at the university on the big screen.
After the class, we all went to meet a representative of The Edinburgh Remakery in Leith. They take broken items (furniture, computer equipment etc.), repair them and resell them/donate them. It was very inspiring to hear how many magnificent objects they managed to create out of things that were going to landfill. We hoped that the 1st year students that went to the meeting with us would be more encouraged to recycle, upcycle and try using existing products in their invention designs.
The world had to stop
Meanwhile, the situation in the world had diametrically changed. Due to Covid-19 pandemic, the university campus closed and we were not able to continue working with the students. We didn’t know what to do, we didn’t know what to think. We left all the models in the studio and the office, hoping it is only temporary. As we found out later, it was not.
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