We learned about Enchanted Objects in this class. For the workshop, the goal was to identify a problem with cats. Our group came up with the problem that the cats owners sometimes cannot feed their cats on time due to varies reasons. Before deciding on this problem, we also have few different ones. For example, some of us think the cats need to have more space to play around. Since me and Gabriela both have experience raising cats, we were trying hard to remember what we observed with our cats. It turns out that the feeding problem is the most common one among all the problems we came up with. Every cat needs to eat, but not every cat owner can feed their cats on time.
After coming up with one problem, each group had to switch to another group to solve the problem they brought up. They inferred that the cats might have problem communicating with their owners for the needs they have. We came up with the idea that we can create a system that can identify cats different kinds of “meow”s. Based on this, we can understand what they are asking for.
Finally, we switched to another group again to make a prototype based on the previous group’s solution idea. The problem identified was how to feed and nourish stray cats. The solution was to create a detection system under cars and above tires to watch out for cats. The drivers would be informed if the sensors detect the cats movements. We built the detector with blocks. We also thought about using AI technology to detect the cats movement.
I really enjoyed this workshop. It is an intensive workshop but not stressful at all. And I like the ideas of switching the group to solve others’ problem and making prototypes based on others’ ideas. It allows us to reach out to more problems and ideas in a very limited period of time and to exert our own creative thinking to a greater extent. It is also very interesting to see the difference between other groups ideas and ours.