PIN BOARD INTERACTIONS

LIFE SIZE PIN TOY

POV: It is our goal to challenge those who doubt their creativity by visually engaging our users and encouraging interaction in an uncommon space that is not typically used for social events.

USER: Any person who considers themsleves "left brain" or doubts their creative abilities

To begin our process, our team came together during class to ideate on ways that we all come together. Finding common ground on activites and spaces that bring us together can help us with a way to create to bring others together.

Topics that commonly came up were places that we go to "escape" from the real world. Movies, dances, beaches and lakes were all spaces that one goes to in order to have a break from life and relax. This started our first idea of designing a scene where those interacting with our space could relax and feel at ease from the stresses of college, which would be our target user. However, we realized as we got farther into the design process that simply decorating a space wasnt going to fully capture what we had wanted to and through a couple more ideation meetings we were inspired by a pin toy.

Our team had an idea of creating a life size pin toy that anyone could interact with.

Our original space that we had thought to be ideal for the escape get away was not as challanging as using the third level stairs to install our design. During class we weighted the options of both spaces and ultimatley decided that using the stairs would allow for better creativity and use for our design. By using the stairs we could challenge our user to directly engage with our design and others in a space that is typically an extremely passive location.

In the next class we used our time deciding how we would install our 4ftx8ft board on the stairs and find a way to support the weight without getting in the way of the users interacting with the board.

In class pin up of jointer photos, space sketches, and floor plans.

Refining our diagrams to fit the stairs we took measurments of the space, the board, and length of wood needed to create the frame.

Jointer photo of third floor stairs.

Process of prototyping.

Rough prototype of board frame on stairs.Finding a way to keep the board straight on the stairs required thinking on different ways to keep it stable.

Deciding what materials would work best with our design we used our new resources and sought help from the helpers in the wood shop. Originally thinking we would have to buy board and drill all these holes equal distance we were saved the labor from finding out that there was such a product that already existed, pegboard. Using a 4"x1" board we prototyped and found that straws worked better than wood dowels because they didnt recieve as much friction and found endcaps used on wire shelving for the end.

Thanks to Menards we found all the materials we needed!

Matersials:12 boards of wood and 5 pegboards so we could reduce the amount of room allowed for our straws to move and bend.

Using our new woodshop skills we cut and put together a frame for our board and ran into our second problem of finding ourt that not only were our cuts inaccurate due to our lack of tool experience, but also that we did not design a way for our board to stand. We were planning on attatching feet at the end of our frame but found that our board cant be supported unless the feet for our stand is integrated into the frame design.

Process of making boards in the wood shop.

Fixing our support problem by adding wood beams into the frame, we also made a second pannel to extend our original one off the stairs and into the hallway space.

The tedious process of sticking the roughly 6,000 straws in the pegboard.

Completely finished board in our space on the stairs.

Real reactions to the installation.

The purpose of creating our project was to challange and inspire the "left brain" thinkers and all people who doubt their creativity to show them a fun way to engage and interact with others and our installation. Using colored straws draws the attention of the user over to our space and allows them to let their curiousily lead them. Our space is great for allowing us to leave part of the board on the ground and then flows up the stairs for the interaction to of our users to follow.