Almost halfway through the program, and everyone is starting to feel the time crunch. We were able to make really useful steps in our project this week, meeting with people at Rice 360 with extensive experience and getting to talk through our design questions with them. Outside of our project, we were able to hear a lot more about other teams’ progress. We also got to do our first prototyping workshop.

Splitting into small teams, we each had just ten minutes to create something that would protect an egg from a 20 foot drop. Using low-fidelity materials around the OEDK (think pipe cleaners, balloons, and straws), every team eventually produced some abomination of duct tape and popsicle sticks. We went outside the OEDK and got to test our creations one by one, with the promise of campus coffeehouse gift cards for successful teams.

My team was one of two success stories. Photos from the drop are below, with Alois clearly having little confidence in our design. Though a couple of our balloons popped on impact with the stairs, the egg was very much intact in the center of the balloons, under layers of felt and cotton balls.

Beyond the fun of the egg drop challenge, it was a really good way to be reminded that for early prototyping you have to just go. You can’t worry about “good” or “ideal” or even “functional” this early in the process. Pretend you have ten minutes and get the duct tape out. Maybe your egg will survive.

With that, my project team is really excited to dig into brainstorming and begin prototyping next week. We’ve been knee-deep in research for a while now, and it’s always good to start working with our hands and get ideas out of our heads into the real world. Even if they’re made of popsicle sticks for now.