Introduction to Creative Play: EGG DROP (Week 3)

Oct 13, 2016

Rapid prototyping and team building was the aim of the EGG DROP challenge. We learned how to refine our ideas in a creative way to protect an egg from cracking when dropped from a great height. I felt as though today helped to gain confidence within a team but also demonstrate my creative thinking and illustrate my ideas. Research was very important in the making of our egg hamper but our main source of influence definitely came from a very simple but strong idea that my teammate, Laura, had when researching origami techniques. It was at first in the form of a decorative piece at the top of the tower we were tasked to make in the first half of the lesson.

With some advice from our tutor, Kris, we were advised that these "fortune-teller" shapes would bode well in protecting our egg. Most likely because triangles are one of the strongest shapes in nature.

We noticed how things such as crumpled up paper created more protection but also how triangles were used to create strength within. Kristin also explained that protecting something with air is also a good way of reducing any damage from an impact. I built upon this idea by taking influences from styrofoam in parcel packaging. In this case I scrunched up paper and taped it to the inner sides of the fortune teller shape. We drew up these designs with plans of using a parachute.

We tried to imitate parachute designs we had researched, hoping that we could emulate the same effect. (At the time we though masking tape would be the best form of reinforcement.

Unfortunately we could not prototype test this design before the drop and our group was slightly rushed towards the end.

Here is the result of our egg drop device:

Clearly the parachute didn't work BUT the fortune-teller container absorbed all the impact and kept the egg safe and sound.

Our sort-of failed structure was binned due to our device getting covered in broken raw egg, form the other teams... but here is a photograph of our intact egg. In conclusion today was valuable in the aid of developing my communication skills and starting out on my rapid-prototyping skills. I imagine that these skills will be built upon further throughout the duration of the course.