http://cargocollective.com Ethan Frier Showcase Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:51:40 +0000 http://cargocollective.com en http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/Ethan-Frier http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/following/ethanfriershowcase/Ethan-Frier Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:51:40 +0000 Ethan Frier Showcase 2567729 About Me: I was born In Baltimore, Maryland and lived there all my life until I moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to attend the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. I was not like a lot of my peers in high school, in that I knew exactly what I wanted to do for years before I actually was able to apply to design schools for college. I have always been artistic and consider myself an avid tinkerer. I would take apart and put back together toys and would sit in my room and draw cars late into the night. I knew that industrial design was the right path for me, and for the past three years I have been learning the ins and outs of the field but I know I still have much more to learn. Long Term Goals: As my graduation and entry into the real world draws closer I have been grappling with my career path and trying to figure out what I want to actually do within the field of design. I believe in design and I think is a crucial and powerful tool. But I hate to think of the waste we lead to. I walk around and look in store windows or see what people own and all I can think is ‘landfill, landfill, landfill’. I know that I could not be happy just creating more plastic junk produced in China which people don’t need, just to make more money for whatever CEO or board of trustees. I have invested a lot of time and energy into making myself as good of a designer as possible, and I want to use these skills to enact good. Again, I think design is an immensely powerful tool and I don’t want to waste it. Currently I am interested in humanitarian design. I enjoy the work of organizations such as Project H, IDEO.org, and Reboot. I applaud their application of design and design thinking for out of the box solutions to problems which actually need to be solved. I think that I would be happy and satisfied as a designer if I had the opportunity to work with organizations such as these, or perhaps even start my own organization. About Me: I was born In Baltimore, Maryland and lived there all my life until I moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to attend the Carnegie Mellon School of Design. ... http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/DG212-Manufacturing-technology http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/following/ethanfriershowcase/DG212-Manufacturing-technology Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:31:02 +0000 Ethan Frier Showcase 2567760 Quarter: 2 Assignor: F.L.M. Delbressine In this assignment I learned about a range of different manufacturing techniques and the material constraints of those processes. This is crucial for designers to know. We can draw and model the most beautiful and amazing products, but the reality is that to be brought into the world, they have to be manufacturable. And designers have to know what is feasible and what is not. Before this assignment I had a general knowledge of how things are made and what can be made. I have extensive experience producing project is a range of materials: wood, metals, composites, plastics. But I have never had to design something to be produced by somebody else, in a mass production scenario. Two days of the assignment were spent in the classroom talking about different manufacturing techniques. But the most informative part of the assignment was the two days we spend at the GTD, actually seeing these processes in action. We observed different production techniques for metal, wood, glass plastics, and composites. We saw lathes, mills, other cnc machines, electrodischarge machines, optical turning, glass working, 3d printing, and others. The final part of the assignment was to breakdown and analyze a products to learn how it was made and why it was made in that way. My self and two classmates disassembled and studied a ipod to learn about it. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567760/DSC08947.JPG" width="670" height="448" width_o="1024" height_o="686" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567760/DSC08947_o.JPG" data-mid="13256945" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567760/DSC09050.JPG" width="670" height="448" width_o="1024" height_o="686" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567760/DSC09050_o.JPG" data-mid="13256949" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567760/DSC09105.JPG" width="670" height="448" width_o="1024" height_o="686" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567760/DSC09105_o.JPG" data-mid="13256955" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567760/all together.jpg" width="670" height="575" width_o="2048" height_o="1758" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567760/all together_o.jpg" data-mid="13256968" border="0" align="left"/> Quarter: 2 Assignor: F.L.M. Delbressine In this assignment I learned about a range of different manufacturing techniques and the material constraints of those... http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/DG233-Microcontrollers-Arduino-and-Beyond http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/following/ethanfriershowcase/DG233-Microcontrollers-Arduino-and-Beyond Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:31:01 +0000 Ethan Frier Showcase 2567751 Quarter: 1 Assignor: G.R. Langereis In this assignment I learned how to program microcontrollers. This was my first introduction to programming in general as well as the Arduino environment. One of the reasons I came to TU/e was to learn about programming and technology, and bring those skills back to my education at CMU. TU/e is known for the emphasis on technology and interaction so I was excited to learn about it here. This is something which I do not have to opportunity to learn about back home, so I wanted to capitalize on the opportunity. In the 7 weeks of the assignment I went from absolute ignorance about how microcontrollers work and how to write code, to a level of understanding where I could actually help other students with the work. This is a skill which I am only starting to develop and I am not at the point where I am fluent in the ability to code interactive designs. I see this assignment to a general introduction to programming and Arduino, and It provided me with the baseline skills and understanding of terminology so that I can continue to learn more on my own, which I intend to do. Quarter: 1 Assignor: G.R. Langereis In this assignment I learned how to program microcontrollers. This was my first introduction to programming in general as well... http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/DG618-Interaction-Between-Dynamic-Form-and-Culture http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/following/ethanfriershowcase/DG618-Interaction-Between-Dynamic-Form-and-Culture Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:30:59 +0000 Ethan Frier Showcase 2567746 Quarter: 1 Assignors: P.R. Ross, J.L. Kint In this assignment we explored the relationship between cultural values and interactive design. The assignment began with discussion about values and culture. We discussed values such as hedonism, benevolence, universalism, power, and security and how they related to culture. We each chose a value which we would work with for the duration of the assignment, I chose ‘achievement’ and how it related to the culture of exploration. Exploration is not necessarily a culture in the traditional sense, but I approached it from the perspective of adventure explorers, the kind of people who undertake extreme tasks of mental and physical endurance. Some examples are deep sea scientists, mountaineers, cross continent bikers, Solo Atlantic crossings, ect. This assignment was really my first introduction to how TU/e works. I had a very difficult time figuring out what the assignors expected and I found the direction to be ambiguous for me because I had no idea what was expected. There was also a bit of a communication problem. For example, our first task was to create a ‘dynamic collage”. I came to class with a 2 dimensional collage I made from images, I had no idea the assignors expected an animation. In general I felt very confused about the whole TU/e process. Nothing was ever explained to me, I guess it was assumed that I would figure it out as I go along. The assignment eventually culminated to the design and production of a dynamic lighting piece based on our value and how it related to culture. My initial concepts were about how different people on the expeditions relate and live with each other. I was thinking about how a piece of design could symbolize the bonds they share and express how these teams work collectively to achieve a goal. I explored the idea of a small light which each member would carry. When brought together the lights would all glow brighter, symbolizing the fact that the goal can only be achieved by the team not the individual After discussing this concept with the assignors I moved in a different direction. I started thinking about the connection not between the team members, but between the explorer and the people they leave at home, and how these long trips could affect that relationship. My personal experience with moving to a different country for the semester also played into the development of this concept. My final direction was a lighting element which provided a connection between somebody away from home and the people they left at home. A lighting element at the house mirrors the environment of the explorer. The explorer would wear a small token with a light sensor. This would read the ambient light of his or her environment for the lamp at home to replicate. The token is also a small physical reminder of the people on the other end. And the lamp allows people at home to know what kind of environment the explorer is in, and is a passive reminder. The form of the light is inspired by a stilted lighthouse which I remember visiting in my childhood near my home in Baltimore, Maryland. A lighthouse signifies the end of a voyage. After crossing the ocean, it is a beacon for sailors, the first thing they would experience of the newly reached land. I thought this was an appropriate metaphor for a theme of achievement. The form is also inspired by nautical forms, such as the lugging ropes used on old sailing ships. The lamp is assembled by lashing, which is also a nautical technique for temporarily fastening things together. I took this assignment because I am interested in the cultural implications of design, as I mentioned in my PDP. But I also took it because it was an opportunity for me to learn about tangible interaction, another point I made in my PDP. Between my confusion about the assignment and it really being my introduction to the TU/e way of thinking I did miss an opportunity to really push the envelope in terms of the interactions. I talked to my assessors about this and they also mentioned it in my feedback. I am personally happy with what I produced, but again I could have explored the actual interaction of the light to a greater extent. Quarter: 1 Assignors: P.R. Ross, J.L. Kint In this assignment we explored the relationship between cultural values and interactive design. The assignment began... http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/Self-Directed-Learning-period http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/following/ethanfriershowcase/Self-Directed-Learning-period Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:30:58 +0000 Ethan Frier Showcase 2567741 During the Self Directed Learning weeks I had the opportunity to travel, explore Dutch design week and experiment with movie making. I spent the first week traveling in Spain and France. I then came back to Eindhoven and attended Dutch design week and spent the remaining time experimenting with film. These activates targeted my competency areas of socio-cultural awareness and form and senses. In my PDP, one of my learning goals was to travel within Europe during the semester. I have the fortunate opportunity to be able to study here in Eindhoven, but it would have been a shame for me to move here for the semester and only see and experience Dutch culture. In the first week of the SDL period I traveled to Barcelona and then to Paris. In Barcelona I was able to attend the Barcelona Design Week and went to an afternoon of lectures by Spanish designers. I heard talks on eco-design and biomimicry which ended up to some degree influencing the direction of my project. The second week of SDL was Dutch design week. I arrived back from Paris on the second day of Dutch Design Week. I spent most of this second week exploring all that Dutch Design Week had to offer. This was an opportunity to see and observe the state of Dutch Design today. At TU/e I have learned a lot, but one thing I had not really experienced yet was the general field of Dutch Design, so that was a good experience for me to learn more about it. I attended a symposium on Automotive design, as well as the film series help at Piet Hein Eek, and went to the exhibitions at Klokgebouw, Design Huis, ID’11, and the Design Academy graduation show. I don’t know if the majority of the work I saw resonated with me, But some pieces I found really interesting. I really enjoyed the Phillips microbial Home exhibit and the children’s exhibit at Apparatenfabriek. I spent my remaining time during the SDL period experimenting with film, something which I have always wanted to try, but never had the chance to. This was really more of a trial and error experiment and did not really produce anything substantial. But it was an opportunity for me to get my foot in the door with this medium and start to get comfortable with it. I used my DSLR, which surprised me with the quality of video. I would not consider anything of what I shot to be a success though. I learned that editing is really more important than the shots themselves sometimes. And the combination of my inexperience and lack of software were a struggle. A friend of mine did help me and taught me some of the basics of how to shoot and edit. Making videos about your project is very important, especially with the nature of the internet. A good video can make a project bounce around the blogosphere surprisingly fast. I’m also glad I had the opportunity to take these three weeks as a break from full time work on my project. Going into the SDL weeks I was stressed about the direction of my project. But taking the time to step back and not think about it for a bit helped me come back after the three weeks and make some quick and significant progressed. I arrived at my final concept and direction in the week directly following the SDL weeks. During the Self Directed Learning weeks I had the opportunity to travel, explore Dutch design week and experiment with movie making. I spent the first week... http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/ALP-Refrigeration-and-Transportation http://cargocollective.com/ethanfriershowcase/following/ethanfriershowcase/ALP-Refrigeration-and-Transportation Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:30:57 +0000 Ethan Frier Showcase 2567714 Getting started The beginning of this project was pretty confusing for me. I had never been given such a broad prompt, in addition to knowing that I had a whole semester to work on it. I am used to completing projects in a few weeks, not a few months. It was definitely daunting, and at the time, the mysterious and complicated nature of nanotechnology did not help. I started out by trying to figure out what nanotechnology even was. The first two weeks I spent just researching nanotechnology and trying to wrap my head around what it is and what it is capable of. Since this is a speculative project, learning about the current capabilities of nanotechnology was not enough, we had to figure out what nanotechnology could be in the future. This mental leap required us to first understand the principals and general capabilities of nanotech, and learn as much as we could about the current research and then extrapolate from that what nanotech could be capable of in the near future. Brainstorming Once we had what we though was a sufficient understanding of nanotech we started brainstorming ideas. These brainstorming sessions were not the most productive. It felt like we were just grasping at straws, there was no real structure and we never really got any actionable concepts out of them. Throughout this brainstorming process we were also still struggling with understanding what the project even was. Nanosupermarket is very broad, and our concepts were just too scattered. We were looking at products, systems and services. So we decided to step back a bit and look at it from a larger view. We drew up a chart of 20 possible categories and then spent some time over the course of a few days and just went wild discussing possible concepts within each category. They say there is no judgment in brainstorming and we tried to stick to that. We talked about anything within those categories, even if it was not feasible or realistic we wrote it down. After discussion within the group and with our coach we narrowed the 20 categories down to 5 general themes which we all liked. From the 5 we focused our direction on one final theme and context. Our agreed upon direction was ‘smart packaging in the context of the supermarket’. Throughout the entire process from the beginning we kept on gravitating towards a supermarket context. It was in part due to the project being called Nanosupermarket. Even though we knew that the project name does not necessarily mean an actual supermarket, it was something all of us kept coming back to. This also may have been in part due to a cultural misunderstanding on my part. In America if you say ‘supermarket’ it implies a food store. But apparently in Dutch a supermarket could be any large general store, which could be a food store like Albert Hein, or it could be another large store like MediaMart. Initial Concept development By group consensus we finalized our direction as ‘Nano packaging in the context of the Supermarket’. At this point we had agreed that while this was a group project, for the time being we were all going to work on individual concepts within this theme. At this point in the project we left the door open for these concepts to mature naturally. If at a later date it made more sense to combine these concepts into one two or three projects which pulled from our individual concepts then we were open to that. But we wanted to let each of us to have some time to develop an idea. At this point it was about two weeks before the midterm exhibition and I still did not have any solid concepts within our theme that I felt were strong enough to move forward with. In the next two weeks I worked to develop a concept which used biomimetric (mimicking nature) properties, and applied them to packaging in order to make packaging more efficient and natural. I spent time studying and researching biomimicry and targeted several natural qualities which I thought were useful and interesting. I developed a packaging concept which was a thermally conductive package for more efficiently refrigerating meat in a supermarket. In one of my trips to the supermarket I noticed that the meat sold in Albert Hein came in these square plastic containers which wasted a lot of space inside. I combined two properties, one nanotech and one biomimetric. In my initial nanotech research I read a lot about carbon nanotubes (CNTs) and all of their interesting and novel properties. One of their lesser discussed properties is their excellent thermal conductivity. During my biomimicry research I was fascinated by a species of frog which keeps their eggs warm by using their rear legs to kick up a foam which coats the eggs and insulates them. I though what if the meat was incased in a sock type sleeve which would have CNTs embedded in them. If the shelf had a refrigerant pumped through it, this packaging could conduct the refrigeration from the shelf and dissipate it into the meat. This solution would eliminate all of the wasted volume in the plastic meat containers and solve the inefficiency of the current refrigeration system (pouring cold air over food only to have it spill out into the store). The meat packaging concept was just one of a whole list of biomimicry packaging concepts. I was drawn to the idea of biomimicry because the supermarket feels so calculated and sterile. Everything is lined up on shelves in bright plastic packages which scream at you to buy them, but get lost in a sea of 1000s of other doing the same thing. How would nature design a supermarket? How would nature deal with this complexity? I drew up a list of packaging themes based on my biomimicry and nanotechnology research and from those themes developed a list of possible implementations of biomimicry and nanotechnology to specific packaging concepts. Themes: Modularity Material adhesive (non chemical) Scaleable volume Information layering (conveying condition of package contents) Edible packaging Immersive packaging (spray on?) Heat transfer efficiency Biodegradable properties and lifecycle planning Temporary packaging Reducing transpiration costs Programmable degradation (goes away once its job is done) Possible products: A milk carton which changes when the milk inside goes bad (rotting fruit) Resealable packages using no chemical adhesive (nano glue, butterfly) Attaching products together for shipping using capillary action (aphid feet) Scaleable modularity, chip bags which stick together (banana bunches) Non hollow, non puncture-able bottles (lettuce, citrus fruits) More efficient insulation to reduce cooling costs of meat (spittlebug foam) Durable yet biodegradable packages (coconuts, sea beans) Temporary packages for items made in store, such as bread State change packages, flexible to rigid (sea cucumber Reactive packages, a certain action or material opens them (puss moth) Regulating moisture of packaged bread Bottle with scaleable volumes (pelican, uterus, ticks, leeches) Scaleable volume for non liquid packages (armadillo, cadisflies) Folding packages, consolidated shipping, expanded display (plant folds) Breathable and shock absorbent package for delicate products (eggshells) Protecting against freezer burn (moth cocoon fibers) Immersive packaging (eggs, Japanese flying frog, lungfish) Replacing the twist top bottle (heart valve) Long term food storage, canning alternative (seeds and beans, lotus pod) Replacement for net packaging used for fruits and veggie (octopus net) Controlling oxygen level inside of packages (newt) Re hydration of packaged products, example: soup (anhydrobiosis) Edible packaging – not corn based ! (apples, grapes, weevils, lichens) Programmable degradation (sponges, cellulose digestion) Midterm Exhibition I purposefully designed my poster for the midterm is a way which I thought generally posed my concept, but left room for people to give me broader feedback. It was my hope that I could start a discussion through the loose questions posed and then discuss my specific concepts with people after they understood some of the problems I was looking at. At the midterm exhibition I did not get very critical or specific feedback, and I went into the SDL weeks still somewhat uncertain. Over the course of the SDL weeks I thought a lot about the concept. I realized that the main problem I was undertaking here was the inefficiency of refrigeration systems. And to just design a solution for meat was not solving the larger scale problem. So I attempted to scale my concept of ‘contact cooling’ to the entire category of refrigerated food. Albert Hein Research Over the course of the project, lots of time was spent in Albert Hein. I spoke with the manager of one Albert Hein for close to an hour and talked to him about the entire operation. I observed food being unloaded off of trucks, and how they stock the shelves. I learned about how the refrigeration system works, the large holding refrigerators in the back of the store and discussed how the manager and employees felt about current refrigeration. I also spent time at Albert Hein examining the different types of packages and refrigeration units. This research was very effective, and really made me realize how complex and chaotic this system is. There are so many players and factors. I knew that designing for this environment would be a big challenge. Broadening Scope of Concept After moving away from the meat concept I kept the same general aproach but broadened the types of foods I was looking at. This new concept was to actually replace all packaging of refrigerated foods with the CNT contact cooling concept. Every milk jug, butter tub and salad bag would be made of plastic with a layer of CNTs. And all refrigerated cases would be replaced with the refrigerated shelves. The packages sitting on the shelves would be passively cooled via contact. I worked with this for a couple weeks and drew up how the shelving and packaging would work. But there were a few nagging problems with it. First was just the scale a realistically producing enough CNTs to be put in every piece of refrigerated packaging. It is a new technology, and one problem is that we don’t know what the long term risks of it are. Having millions of these nano packages end up in landfills could lead to unpredictable consequences. Not to mention the economics of the technology and how much each of these disposable packages would cost. The final nail in the coffin of this idea came during a particularly lengthy session at Albert Hein. I spent three hours in the refrigerated food section, trying to create a comprehensive study of all the different types of packages and their different geometries. I realized soon that it was just too diverse and chaotic for this idea to work. Some packages are odd shapes, the shelves themselves are disorganized and the products get stacked very high (5-6 high sometimes – the ones on top would never conduct with the same efficiency as the packages in direct contact with the shelves.). Final Concept Direction After talking to my coach I had to make a decision whether I wanted to introduce a concept which would totally redefine how food should be packaged (by dictating the sizes and shapes of the packages). Or take a more realistic approach and come up with a new concept which would be more of a retrofit than a revolution. I chose to move on to a new concept which would be a bit more realistic to actually implement. So I went back to the drawing board and tried to define exactly the problem I was trying to solve, which is the inefficiency of supermarket refrigeration. I then stepped back and with fresh eyes looked at the problem from the ground up again. And sometimes in design you just need that epiphany. And in this project I had one which directly influenced my final concept. I took a trip to Copenhagen for the weekend to visit some friends. We wanted to cook dinner so we went to the local grocery store. This particular store was cheap they said, but when we walked in I saw something interesting. The store stocked the refrigerated shelves and kept the products in the boxes they were shipped in. I pulled out my iPod and started snapping pictures (my groupmates have since informed me that Aldi does the same thing, but I had never been in an Aldi, it was the first time I had seen this done). I thought, what if the boxes that products were shipped in could turn into the shelves themselves. And what if these boxes were reusable and had the same nano conductivity as my previous concept? So the products would still keep their current plastic packaging but would be packed together in conductive boxes which could pull the refrigeration out of a permanent surface installed in the supermarket. This led to my final concept. I designed a system which deals with not only the refrigeration of food, but the entire cycle from farm to fridge. I call it Alp. <img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567714/Alp web final 1.jpg" width="670" height="3521" width_o="768" height_o="4037" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567714/Alp web final 1_o.jpg" data-mid="13309389" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567714/Alp web final 2.jpg" width="670" height="3580" width_o="766" height_o="4096" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567714/Alp web final 2_o.jpg" data-mid="13309392" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567714/Alp web final 3.jpg" width="670" height="2292" width_o="768" height_o="2628" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567714/Alp web final 3_o.jpg" data-mid="13309394" border="0" align="left"/><img src="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567714/Alp web final 4.jpg" width="670" height="3098" width_o="768" height_o="3552" src_o="http://payload13.cargocollective.com/1/5/171192/2567714/Alp web final 4_o.jpg" data-mid="13309397" border="0" align="left"/> Getting started The beginning of this project was pretty confusing for me. I had never been given such a broad prompt, in addition to knowing that I had a whole...