Final Thoughts

This semester has been both frustrating and rewarding. This class was the most time intensive studio that I have taken thus far in my college career, and although it was not worth more credits than my other studios, it quickly became the most important because of all the learning opportunities I felt it presented. At the beginning of the year, I expected to focus on the biomimicry/ bioinspiration for our designs, but to my disappointment I found that this aspect was sometimes fit to our design after, instead of being the factor that shaped our projects. I’ve learned a lot about the design process, and how to be as effective and efficient as possible especially while working within a multidisciplinary team. I was also exposed to a lot of different technology that I would probably otherwise not have heard of, let alone had a chance to experiment with. This added onto my skill set and will definitely affect my future projects. There were frustrations along the way, particularly while designing, because a lot of the time the designs were based on the electronic components, which I did not know a lot about and could not contribute to as much as I would have liked. But these also proved to be learning opportunities for smaller, but important tasks such as wiring and soldering. Overall, I think our smart surface was successful in that we experimented with and implemented a smart material for the biomimicry story we were trying to achieve.

After our final critique, I expected to feel a sense of relief, but instead I found myself feeling upset. I think it is fair to say that I will never again take a class like this again. It feels as if this particular learning experience is not over. The entire semester has been about learning, but ideally we would have another one or two semesters to really build on what we've learned. I know that it is not feasible for us to have more than one class like this. John mentioned that for the amount of money we were given for our projects, we would have to have a total of 96 students to break even. I know I have learned a lot in this class, and will implement the skills I have been building for the last couple of months in my future projects, but it will not be the same because of the rich learning environment and the professors as well as peers that I was able to work with.