The focus of lecture this week was “pretotyping.” Pretotyping is a unique way to externalize internal thinking and quickly evaluate the conceivability and success of a potential device. I really enjoyed the TED talk about rapid prototyping. I think that the amount of work that can be accomplished in a short period of time when forced to be efficient is amazing and more businesses should move to a meeting structure like those Tom Chi outlined in his talk. Instead of getting stuck on one idea and wasting time on it, participants in the meetings were given a set amount of time to work on an idea and then they were told to move on. Overall, I think rapid prototyping and pretotyping are great ways to keep momentum in a project and ensure that time is being used wisely.

    Thinking of a pretotype for the device I chose this week was difficult because I wanted to design the actual device rather than a rough model of it. The device I chose was an infant warmer using a phase change material. I wanted to research phase change materials and look into implementing one of those in my pretotype; however, I realized a pretotype should be able to be made with materials at hand. I eventually thought of microwaving rice in a sock as a make-shift heater and used that as an example of a pretotype for the infant warmer. Overall, this week was a good exercise for me in thinking outside of the box.