Thursday, the 4. September in 2018, was our last day in the Sketching with Hardware Workshop. On this day, I was on turn to document the day progress. I started in the morning and asked each team questions about project status, stress level and how they thought the workshop after one week.
After two days of introduction, all participants were really hyped for the project topic and for creating their own revolution in the field of smart home assistance – while including some aspects the user would not except. The motivation across all groups was high, and the 30-minute brainstorming session birthed some promising ideas. Each team discussed their ideas in the group for exchanging or sharing some projects with the rest. Quickly, the first concrete ideas manifested and the teams started to draw, discuss and build their first prototypes. In the following, the group ideas, the planned features as well as their progress for the first day and their next steps will be documented.
Day 1: Humble beginnings
It’s Day 5, a Friday noon. I chose the time to do the interview before everybody went to lunch.
In German, we call Friday “Freitag”. “Frei” means free. Actually, we are not free, because we still have work to do. It is the third day we started to build our project, and just one and a half day left. We still have time to achieve our goals and reconsider the additional features we want.
I really curious about the complement degrees of each team.🤔 Because we still have time, which means, The groups with more accomplished degrees are able to consider additional features they liked. Maybe those with relatively low completion rates need to consider abandoning some minor features that have little to do with the main functions. So today is critical. And maybe they can share me with some works they expected to do today. It would be interesting to compare their plans for today with what they ultimately achieved.
The following contents are the paraphrases of the speakers from each team.
Today starts differently compared to the last days because of two reasons: First of, Franni (my team partner) and me meet at Bauhaus instead of in the Sketching with Hardware room because we have to get some supplies for our project (more details on that later) and secondly the weather drastically changed for the worse. Instead of approximately 30 °C yesterday it is now raining cats and dogs ☹️ But we finally arrive at the hardware store to get a wooden panel for our box and some smaller stuff (springs, boards etc.) and also encounter this phenomenon of either not finding an employee at all if you need help (which can happen in a huge store like this) or finding one which can’t help you because he or she is from the wrong department. But in the end, we manage to get everything. It takes longer than expected but after 2 hours and a stop at a drugstore to get a makeup sponge for our project we finally arrive at the university.
In the following I will give you a quick overview on what each team is working on today, what next steps they plan etc. I will also ask them for their satisfaction and stress level and ask them again in the afternoon if they met their daily goal. Keep in mind that the project names might still be subject to change. So, without further ado, let’s go 😀
Today is day 6, what means that it is the day before the final presentation. It is Monday the 3rd of September 2018, the outside temperature in the Frauenlobstraße is 18 degrees. After a rainy weekend it clears up slowly. A good omen? The mood of the teams is still positive and the students seem relaxed to the outside. But the stress-level is slowly rising.
tl;dr: Here is the last day in 15 seconds:
It is already Wednesday morning, it is freezing cold outside and this years “Sketching with Hardware” building phase is already at its halftime. Everyone is working on their projects and the stress level is overall pretty low, although some teams had a very short night because of minor incidents.
Unfortunately some of the participants are arriving a bit late because of exams, but our coaches are on time as always and giving advise on how to solve problems with a lot of creativity and expertise. And as soon as Bernhard is supplying us with sweets, the stress of the previous days seems to vanish instantly.
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Yesterday everyone has finally chosen their topic of this years “Sketching with Hardware”. Every team has an idea what they want to do next on their project. Some of them already have built a a rough construction, others are still considering to find out how they can build their projects as good as possible.
This Thursday, the 22nd of February, began as cold as all the other days of the week. Nevertheless, all teams showed up on time and ready to finally complete their precious projects. As the days before our very helpful and friendly coach-team split up to optimize their momentum: Beat took the morning shift and Bernhard showed up two hours later to offer his expertise and craftsmanship later in the day. Although this was the last complete day before our final presentations tomorrow most teams were surprisingly relaxed. But as we discovered later for some teams this was a very deceptive silence.
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Tuesday, the 12th September was unfortunately the last day of the event and therefore also the day of the final presentation. This means that most teams were busy with their projects until late at night.
The following diagram provides information about the previous night.
