Peter Ananin's DIXD Blog

Here is a brief summary of the insights I gathered during the phase 1 process.

Nature

• Regular and ease of Acessiblity to natural systems was a key to Joshua (during his wildlife walks or plants within his house)

• Serendipity( when we discover things we are not searching for) is important to bring individuals back in line with nature through being surprising and revealing. Eilidh, Art and Philosophy

• The surprise Eilidh talked of was also seen by aquarium owners who noticed unexpected changes or their creatures showing their individual personalities.

• The rejuvenation and relaxation provided by having nature within their surroundings whether it be lying outside or distracting themselves from their computer by looking into an aquarium, Dominic, Nancy and Ruth.

• Individuals especially kids enjoy simply putting things together and the construction phase is very much a social one where sharing of parts and ideas occur.

Lego

• Parts from different kits end up mixed together to create new creations thanks to the ability for lego’s universal connections. I will use this research to work out the best way to connect the different modules.

• Lego allows all ages to share, learn and build with each other with unlimited imagination. It allows more complex constructions with stories to go along with them for older users but is simple and easy enough to be understood for younger users from the start. My friend Davie talks of his enjoyment of building things out of lego with his son.

Other Feedback

• An interviewee suggested calling it PlanItEarth in which a kit could allow himself and his son to put a mini world together by adding different ingredients and changing factors such as temperature you can prolong or speed up changes in your earth. Through experimenting with their own planetary ingredients they can observe and learn about how the real world works. Jeremy

• Jeremy also talked of his own enjoyment along with his kids at watching and celebrating the transformation of tadpoles into frogs and their different needs. Tadpole made easy kits could be part of my project.

Reflection on phase 1

Looking back through phase 1 I think I spent a bit too much time reading books on the subject which meant I had lots of research to collate. That time could have been used more on drawing up aesthetically pleasing prototypes diagrams but I feel I will have enough time for this early on in phase 2,

I feel overall the research went well and brought up some interesting insights, although the difficulties with doing research in a school meant I had to focus on a slightly older research group than I had hoped.

I found building respect takes a long time to develop  with my project research time being relatively short I feel I need to focus on simply increasing understanding of earths life support systems which would eventually lead to respect in the long run. Understanding is also a lot easier to measure than respect which is quite an abstract aspect.