Final Design

We were tasked with creating a working automaton under the material restrictions of only using foam core, glue, construction paper, and wooden dowels. We ideated themes and mechanisms that would align with these themes, tentatively settling on a pond-themed automaton.

Overview

We developed prototypes for each of the five mechanisms we wanted to include and created basic visual elements to assess how they would change the mechanisms' functionality. These were quite ugly and were effectively just a series of iterating, failing, morbidly piecing things together like a more-sane Dr. Frankenstein, and seeing if that worked.

Initial Prototyping

Once these mechanisms were working separately, I prototyped the fully integrated automaton with all five elements. We created two prototypes of varying fidelity together. Through these prototypes (which were, once again, quite ugly) I tracked our various measurements, failings, and elements we had to add or remove to make the mechanisms work with each other.

AUTOMATON

This was a one-week, rapid prototyping project with a partner for Stanford’s Design 11: Visual Thinking & Prototyping Course.

I had to kill one of my darlings here: I had this idea for a visual element of a drop rippling into concentric circles that would rise and fall using cams. While the cams worked independently, the addition of concentric circles completely inhibited them. As it turned out, the dowels were spinning in an unexpected, non-linear manner, which was inconsistent with the concentric-circle model. Thus, I had to scrap this visual element and replace it with a series of fish instead.

Changes & Redirects

We also shifted our pond-focused theme to a “lake day” theme, incorporating elements of a picnic, a person flying a kite, ducks and geese, and other aspects of a holistic day at the lake to make our visual pattern less repetitive and more interesting. I also selected and sourced a specific palette and brand for our construction paper, using more vibrant, cohesive colors than the traditional duller construction paper colors, as I felt they matched the spirit of our theme.

Finally, I had a specific list of measurements and alignments for all of our mechanisms, and put together the final automaton myself.