Email communications

During this project, there have been a number of email interactions between Damon and myself, which are probably quite significant in terms of the final direction the project has taken. For the record, here are some of those thoughts:

Just had the thought that a large component of DIY is haptic experience, and associated heuristic learning. And that perhaps we should think around products that encourage that.

So something like the rockpool  viewer is intersting – encourages observation, haptic interaction, and learning in children.

And perhaps a product geared toward children is intersting because they are the ones likely to be growing up in a world with increased cheap imports etc. So perhaps a puzzle (two or three D) where some of the pieces are missing? Or where certain elements need to be sourced by the child/user.

Just thinking if creativity/DIY comes from need, then how do we develop a product that creates a need? At least for a certain element thereof before it is complete.

Just thoughts.

I guess what we need to decide is whether we want to have subtle visual clues that reference the DIY approach (like trubridge), or something that encourages DIY in the user. I suspect what Muireann picked up (based on our conversation with her on Monday) from the presentation was a leaning toward using the (very) subtle visual clues, not necessarily using DIY style materials to make the product, or encouraging DIY in the user.

Anyhow, chat more tomorrow. Just trying to get thoughts out there.

Thoughts...

Think we should be concentrating primarily on form first, and materiality thereafter. I think that given the playground/children context, the form and the way in which the pieces fit together is very important. What those pieces are made out of is the next step, and should be whatever best facilitates/allows the form we have designed.

I guess my concern with wood is the only reason that toys were made out of wood in NZ/elsewhere is because that’s what people were limited to. There was no capacity to make complex moulded forms. And I don’t think that we need to place the same historical constraint/limitation on ourselves. Yes it should encourage DIY, but we don’t need to place the historical technological constraints on ourselves. Its the year 2008.