Propagame

The first micro challenge was to design and make “something” that can help the process of designing/creating/thinking/collaborating with others. I teamed up with Roberto and Tatiana to work on this project. The detailed repository can be found here. Our common interests included living materials, interaction, and games to name a few. With this, we settled on the idea of creating a game based on propagation and the growth of plants. We called the game “Propagame”, which is a play on words with both propagation-game and the word propagame in Spanish which means propagate me. The game is played by moving pegs up/down the growth stick by week to monitor growth of the propagated leaves and roots. We began with creating sketches of the proposed game, with two different versions for the game, using bigger plants for one. We settled on the hanging version, because we would be able to see the growth of the Pothos roots as well. We added some inspiration images onto the Miro board and Tatiana drew up a sketch.

Once we decided on the final design, we got to work. Tatiana and I created the scales for the pegs using pieces of scrap wood we found. They consisted of two types of wood since we didn’t have enough material. We measured, cut, and drilled the holes, being careful to be precise and keep everything centered. While we did this, Roberto started on the file to be laser cut. When opened in Rhino, we noticed not all of the lines were fully closed. We noted how important it was to make sure everything is exact so that the laser cutter can be used properly. Tatiana remade the sketch in fusion before finally cutting the pieces. I worked on the flag pieces to be added to the dowels with the vinyl cutter. Using the vinyl cutter was actually really enjoyable, and I want to use it again in the future.

Once we had all of the pieces, we put it together using the seamless press-fit joints, glued on the measuring sticks, painted the name on to make it more visible, inserted the glass test-tubes and propagated plants, and tied a ribbon to hang for the final finishing touch. I feel that our project was successful because it incorporated all of the elements we have learned in the past weeks, including laser cutting, 3D modeling, vinyl cutting, hand tools, and git and HTML. I’m proud of the final product and learned a lot. For the next challenge, I hope that I can use the challenge to develop my projects further and be included in an intervention. I was very apprehensive going into the week, and thought it might be painful. The days were long and intense, but I felt that I was enjoying myself along the way as it felt good to use all of what we had been learning at once and produce a pretty and successful outcome. The website with more detailed process and specifications can be found here.