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Recap of Week 8

  By Kristi Day • July 24, 2009

On Monday, we began to make final decisions about materials and vendors for these materials. We spent a lot of time researching different suppliers online, and pricing different products. During this process, we realized that there were a lot of details about how our designs worked that we hadn’t yet decided on. This slowed down the process of selecting to what to buy, since we weren’t really sure how to make these decisions. We learned that there is less certainty in engineering design than we had originally thought. We continued this research on Tuesday, and also called different companies to gain more information about their products and services.

The Technology Entrepreneurship Workshop ran from Wednesday to Thursday, and was a 2 day “boot-camp” for people who are interested in starting their own businesses. The workshop not only involved the members of our Innovation Norway course, but also members of the community. The course covered everything from how to give an elevator pitch to how to write and business plan, and how to gain the interest of investors like venture capitalists and angel investors.

On Friday, we took a trip to Lowe’s in order to get a better idea of what different parts looked like in real life, since we had been looking at everything online. It was nice to be able to see what the different pieces of hardware were called and more specifically how they worked. Then, in order to increase our work efficiency, we divided up the tasks. Caleb and Rhodes went to Regal Plastics to check out the different options they had available, and Kristi and Nicole stayed behind and worked on finalizing the shopping list for materials.

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Recap of Thursday

  By Caleb Brown • July 16, 2009

After spending a restless night in our tent at the Chick-fil-A in Port Arthur, we took our 52 free meals and headed for home. Since we did not get back to the Rice campus until 8:00 AM, we decided to start work at ten o’clock to give us time to prepare for the intense day ahead. We arrived at the Design Kitchen feeling clean, renewed, and ready for anything.

Our fist task was to complete each Pugh Analysis for the four individual pieces that we started at the beginning of the week. This analysis consisted of numerically evaluating nearly 150 ideas, using evaluation criteria we created specifically to illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of each storage design. Once it was complete, we used the numerical valuation of each idea to narrow the available options down to a top ten for each piece.

After we finished the Pugh Analysis, we had to make haste and delegate tasks in order to meet the needs of the demanding day. Caleb revised and edited a powerpoint presentation for a meeting with Julie Bakke and Wynne Phelan of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Nicole and he had created the bulk of the presentation earlier in the week for the Center for Civic Engagement meeting, but the new version was tailored to give deeper insight into our process.

Rhodes had a very challenging task of finishing the financial projections portion of the business plan for the Innovation Norway Course. This document includes the assumptions we made that provided the basis for our financial projections. Some of categories include revenue, expenses, and earnings before interest and tax. Our financial projection section also included graphs of units sold per year and trends of the categories mentioned above.

While Rhodes and Caleb attended the weekly Innovation Norway class, Kristi and Nicole stayed at the Design Kitchen to push forward in the solution phase. Earlier, each person in the team picked two ideas they liked best, regardless of the Pugh Analysis, and start a new idea pot. Each person then added the two best designs from each top ten list to the pot. Nicole and Kristi took the new idea pot and explored the possibilities of each idea. They combined the best features of different ideas and created concepts with full functionality. Kristi masterfully drew pictures of each concept, seven in all.

With the powerpoint ready and the seven concepts drawn, it was time to meet with Chief Registrar, Julie Bakke and Director of Conservation, Wynne Phelan of MFAH. Rhodes and Caleb gave the presentation, and Nicole and Kristi discussed each design. We were very pleased at how well the designs were received by Julie and Wynne! We left at six o’clock with high hopes from their encouragement and enthusiasm of our ideas.

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Recap of Week 6

  By Kristi Day • July 10, 2009

We started this week by taking another look at our key components spreadsheet, and making sure that all our viable ideas from our note cards were represented. We printed out copies of our spreadsheet, and used them to help us in our next step of the brainstorming process.

We then began to do more note card style brainstorming, this time coming up with more complete ideas, and having our specific art pieces in mind. We referenced our spreadsheet to make sure we addressed all the different design blocks. Each of us came up with very different ideas, since our pieces have a wide-range of needs. We each came up with 15 ideas during this step, and presented our ideas to the others when we were finished, as well as to Dr. Matthew Wettergreen and Grace Rodriguez, who gave us valuable feedback to help us with our ideas.

For our next step, we once again came up with 15 ideas, but this time we focused on modularity and general solutions, rather than solutions tailored to our specific pieces. We still focused on utilizing our design blocks, but the ideas that we generated were very different from the previous round. After this round of brainstorming, we went through our spreadsheet to make sure every design idea had been used at least once. We wrote a list of the ideas that hadn’t been used yet, and referenced this list during our next round, in which we once again generated 15 ideas each.

Before attending our Innovation Norway class on Thursday, we needed to have a rough draft of a market analysis section for our business plan assignment. We did some further research about museums in the United States, and made use of the research we had already done for our Design Analysis Phase Report, in which we extensively examined companies that offer similar products. We also did a final push in our brainstorming, each coming up with 3 realistic ideas that focused on modularity and the use of silicone.

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Recap of Week 5

  By Kristi Day • July 3, 2009

This week, we started our first round of brainstorming. On Monday, we did a warm-up exercise by brainstorming a team name. We thought of a lot of different ideas, from inno-crate to texo-skeleton. We had a time limit on our brainstorming, but we hadn’t chosen a final name yet, so we quickly combined all our ideas into ARTadillo-Inno-Crate-a-Pod. At a later time, we researched which of our name ideas were already company names, in order to narrow our options. Our final decision was ArtArmor.

Our next step was to start brainstorming ideas for our actual project. We each got a stack of 100 blank note cards, and had one hour to write an idea on each one. The ideas didn’t have to be complete or realistic, but we did have to fill out all 100 cards. We then color coded our cards to indicate who came up with each idea, and shuffled them together in a complete stack. Then we each took a section of the stack and read through the ideas, and wrote any additional ideas that we generated.

On Tuesday, we took all our 500 note cards and taped them up on the glass walls of the conference room in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK). Initially, we taped all of them up in random order. Then, we re-organized them into four categories: materials, features, concepts, and geometry. We then broke these down further into more detailed categories. This enabled us to find overlaps in our brainstorming, and access our ideas more easily.

Once we had organized all our ideas, we went through the different categories and tried to brainstorm any more ideas that we could, if we thought of something that was missing. We also looked for trends in our categories that would become our “design blocks.” The intial design blocks were outside shape, interface with object, human interaction, and technologies. These were later broken down into more specific categories, and a materials aspect was added, as we compiled all our ideas into a key componets spreadsheet.

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Brainstorming 201

  By Kristi Day • June 30, 2009

After brainstorming 500 ideas on note cards, in order to productively access our ideas, we needed to organize them.  Before we could organize them, however, we needed to be able to see all of them. We chose the biggest conference room in the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK) for our pallet. All the walls are glass windows, so we taped all our note cards onto the wall so that we could see them all at once. Once the walls were completely covered in note cards, we needed to categorize them to reduce confusion. We read through the cards to look for common themes that could become categories. We initially built four categories: materials, features, concepts, and geometry.

These four categories were still fairly daunting, so we did a further breakdown of each category into more specified sections. Within the materials category, we divided the cards into smaller groups of types of materials, such as metals, fluids, and foams. For the features, we determined that some of the cards indicated specific parts, like different styles of handles, while others were possible features, like temperature monitoring. The concepts section was broken down into cards that suggested building off of a specific existing concept, or new ideas that could stand alone. For the geometry category, we first made a section of the different possible outside shapes, like a sphere or pyramid. In the remaining cards, we saw groups of different ways to interface with the art piece, such as through suspension, anchoring, or nesting.

Adding these more specified sub categories made it possible for us to view our ideas in an organized matter. It also enabled us to find cards that repeated similar ideas. When we found those cards, we stacked them on top of each other, so that we weren’t throwing out any cards, but we were paring the field in order to have a more concise group to work from. We also made an important extra category: the ridiculous category. We didn’t dispose of outrageous ideas, but set them aside, so that inspiration could still be drawn from them.

For more pictures of our brainstorming session, please visit our Flickr page.

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Recap of Week 4

  By Nicole Garcia • June 26, 2009

The main goal of week four was to refine and complete our design and analysis phase report. All of Monday was dedicated to this report.
On Tuesday, we had an extended meeting at the MFAH with Julie Bakke and Wynne Phelan. During this meeting they answered most of the remaining questions needed to complete our report. These questions were about the specifics of our piece selections. They related to us materials that absolutely could not be used in our storage device as well as some materials that would be preferred or acceptable. After this they took us to see all of the pieces. We then took further data as to the structural dimensions of each piece and determined approximate weight and materials. We also discussed more specifically the concerns related to each piece and the history behind the art.

Tuesday afternoon, we attended the weekly Center for Civic Engagement Fellows meeting. At this meeting, Dr. Stephen Klineberg spoke about “The Changing Face of Houston.”
On Wednesday, we compiled the information we received from the MFAH and incorporated it into the report. In the afternoon, Anthony Locastro and Ben Esquivel gave us a tour of 360 Art Services. 360 Art Services is an art packing and crating company in Houston. It is currently one of the companies that is being used by the MFAH. On this tour we received an inside look at how some pieces of art are being stored for transport. Because the pieces come in all different shapes and sizes 360 must consider each piece separately and listen to the needs of their client to properly customize a crate and safely ship each piece. 360 uses a variety of archivally-safe materials and their crates are currently a recognizable red with the 360 logo.

360 Art Services

360 Art Services

On Thursday, we had a question and answers meeting with Dr. Corey Rogge, of the Rice University Chemistry Department, where she answered the remainder of our questions. All of these questions were very specific to the materials that our pieces are each made out of and how these materials degrade, outgass, are conserved, and effect other materials around them. Dr. Rogge also gave us some historical accounts about the science of conservation. It is interesting to note that much was learned from the opening of King Tutankhamun tomb in Egypt by observing how those ancient artifacts had been preserved for centuries underground.

Thursday afternoon, we attended our second Innovation Norway Entrepreneurship class. During this class we recapped reading from The Innovators Dilemma and The Art of the Start. After the recap, Michael Lowe, President and CEO of OrthoAccel Technologies Inc., gave a presentation on the history of his startup company and how they are reaching for success. Along with his history he gave helpful advice as to how to organize and start your own business based on solid ideas and good communication.

Friday, James Springer, of the Library Services Center, gave us a tour of the off site storage for Rice’s Fondren Library collection. They have a modular storage system organized by size. Every book and box is barcoded and shelved. Their storage is climate controlled and all of the books are stored in custom built acid free cardboard shelving units. This storage system has proved to be very efficient and space saving, and is the type of storage Julie Bakke has relayed to us that she would like for the museum.

Rice Library Service Center Storage

Rice Library Service Center Storage

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Recap of Week 3

  By Rhodes Coffey • June 19, 2009

Our third week of the internship consisted of many hours dedicated to research and the refinement of our comprehensive report, which covers everything pertinent to our project. The outline for this report was expanded to encapsulate all of the issues that we need to address. The outline and report include topics on preventive conservation, our mission statement, what current solutions exist at the museum, why a better solution is needed, design objectives, design constraints, materials information, and finally the forces driving the design. These categories are a part of the engineering design process and will facilitate our transition to the design phase in the coming weeks.

On Tuesday, we attended our weekly meeting for the Community for Civic Engagement Summer Fellows. Dr. Kellie Butler, Director of the Office of Fellowships and Undergraduate Research, presented on available scholarships and fellowships for undergraduate and graduate students to travel and study abroad. More information can be found at the Rice Fellowships website.

Caroline Collective sponsored a blood drive Wednesday. All four of us donated blood to the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center, including two who had never donated before. On Thursday, we attended our Innovation Norway class in the Jones School of Business. During this class, we recapped the Rice Alliance Life Science Technology Venture Forum and Gray Hancock lectured on how to build an effective business plan. On Friday, we struggled to get our first paychecks. Unfortunately, two of us could not receive our checks and we got an insipid taste of bureaucracy.

Throughout the week, we worked diligently on researching rapid prototyping and 3D scanning as well as creating a materials database. Our materials database includes all of the vital characteristics of materials that we might utilize in our design including chemical properties, what it can and can’t go with, physical properties, cost, and other characteristics. We have also designed a second matrix that contains all of the materials of our pieces on one side and the potential materials of our solution on the other side. The chart includes positive and negative signs to designate what materials can be used together and what materials should be avoided together. Along with our comprehensive report, the materials research should enable us to enter the design phase with all tools and applicable information documented.

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Innovation Norway Course

  By Nicole Garcia • June 18, 2009

Today we attended the first lecture for the Innovation Norway course in entrepreneurship.

To start the course, we did a brief overview of the Rice Alliance Life Science Technology Ventures Forum. We discussed the best and the worst elevator pitches.

In general, the highest rated elevator pitches were all very personable and relatable. They each stated what the product was, who the target audience was, why their audience would want it, and finally they all clearly stated what they wanted as far as investors and money. The lowest rated speeches tended to be difficult to understand. This was either because they were too technical or simply poorly explained. Most of these forgot to mention what they wanted or how there product would be useful. One of the speeches even failed to mention what he sold. It is also interesting to note that the top and bottom three were the same for both the professional judges as well as the student judges.

This main lecture in this course went into detail about how to write a business plan. This included all of the topics that should be mentioned. In writing a business plan it is also important not only to write it for the well being of the company, but also to appeal to any possible financers. In making a business plan there are two big rules of thumb to follow. The first is that you must ensure credibility. This includes referrencing your entire business plan and making sure that all of your referrences are reliable and recent. Secondly no matter what business you are going into or how new your product is, you must always have competition. Competition, although it appears to be a bad thing, it is possibly one of the best things for your company. Competition shows that your idea and business  is a good one that there is already a need for what you are selling, only your business is going to make it better. Along with all the necessary mechanics of the business plan, these two rules of thumb contribute to making your business look attractive to financers as well as giving you a strong guide to where your company is and where it is going.

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Conservation Tour of MFAH

  By Rhodes Coffey • June 4, 2009

Today, we were given a tour of the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (MFAH) collection and storage areas by Wynne Phelan, MFAH Conservation Director, and Julie Bakke, Chief Registrar of the MFAH. They started the tour by showcasing a variety of pieces in the museum and explaining the conservation issues surrounding these pieces.

One of the things we learned was that the history of the piece’s treatment was often more important than the age of the piece. We also learned about the specific concerns for different materials. They talked about specific needs for the housing of each piece. Some of the main priorities in establishing housing are visibility of the piece, minimizing handling, stabilizing the piece inside the housing, and making efficient use of space in the storage facilities.

They also gave us a behind-the-scenes tour of some of the current storage facilities. The storage of most of the MFAH permanent collection takes place at an off-site facility. We will be touring this facility next week. In the storage areas, we were surprised to find such basic components as cardboard boxes and bubblewrap that were being used to protect priceless works of art. Many of the objects weren’t packed at all, but placed on crowded shelves. This really opened our eyes to the need for a new approach to housing artwork.

After finishing the tour, we were able to sit down with Wynne and Julie and have some of our specific questions answered so that we could get a better understanding of the goals of our project. We need to create housing solutions that will meet the needs of the artwork under all circumstances with the exception of when they are on display. We came away with a better vision of what our project is really aiming for.

One of the most exciting things about our day was having a chance to see some of the pieces that Wynne and Julie had selected as possiblities for us to work with. A few of those pieces are currently on display at the museum, while others are in storage. After our museum trip, we had a chance to sit down and discuss which pieces we should design housing for. Choosing the actual pieces that will be the basis for our project was an important step, and is really making the project start to come to life.