Week three was very hectic as I had planned to have everything done by the end of that week so week four could just be making sure everything was ready and presentable. It wasn’t until that week that I found out that my prototype was meant to be to scale and made from the materials I felt would be suitable if the model was to be actually made. This made me very nervous as I thought I could just make it from cardboard but I then i found out about the materials and realised that I would have to think and actually go out and collect the sticks.
Investigating the materials took a little time as i decided to go with plastic as it was easy. I felt that I didn’t have time to fully investigate materials. Wanted the structure to be strong but due to time I decided to just buy and use brand new materials. If I was to continue this whole project I would look into how to create the structure from materials with the same properties but that would be recycled.
From my little prototype I liked how it looked but felt that it didn’t capture the whole story that I created at the start of this project.
I went back to my original ideas on the A2 boards and saw the second idea and decided to try including that in my final idea.
The next stage was for me to work out the sizes. I worried about this because when I thought about the product I imagined it quite big so I wondered how I would make it and if I would be able to transport it. Researching the sizes of cots helped me to see that it wouldn’t be as big as I thought it would be.
When I was making the final model I kept hitting bumps in the road. The first bump was that the green plastic sheet I bought wasn’t long enough to cover all of the foggy acetate. This meant I had to use two pieces of the green on top of the foggy piece. This made the balance of the structure fall more to one side. To correct this I had to put more stick on one side to even out the weight. If I was to remake this with the same sized materials I would cut the green plastic so the split would be right down the middle of the model instead of being of to the side.
When I collected the sticks I was still imagining the model to be big so I collected long sticks. When I started laying them out I realised they were to long. I had to sit and cut the sticks so they would be shorter and sand the edges because I didn’t want the ends to be sharp or the chance of someone hurting themselves on it. These tasks were very time consuming and in the end I didn’t even use all the sticks that I had cut and sanded.
At the end of week three I didn’t have everything completed like I had hoped. I still had to complete the final model and design the instruction booklet.