Weekly Update – Wednesday, April 13th

Over the course of this project, I have considered time and time again doing something which I am entirely unsure of how it will be received: contacting the designer of the project which inspired my own. Jakub Pollág is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, and is the co-founder of Studio Deform, a company specializing in product and furniture design, interior and exhibition architecture and creative advertisement.

This last week, I spent a great deal of time contemplating my design, and in which direction I wanted to take it. Do I want to complicate the design by adding variable motor speed, a rechargeable battery, and some form of user feedback, or do I want to keep the mechanical design simple and straightforward, and focus more on the aesthetics and overall functionality of the project? I decided that I needed some form of support from an individual who had already went through what I was currently going through, and so I sent an email to Jakub. In the email, I asked about the circuit design of his system, and what motor he had spec’d to meet his needs, and he got back to me surprisingly quickly (within 12 hours). Jakub informed me of the simplicity of his own design, being that the circuit is only a 9V battery, a DC motor with an operating voltage between 7V-15V, and a switch. This insight from Jakub informed my decision to keep my first prototype simple, as to focus on the aesthetics and functionality of the design before moving on to bigger, better, and more complex iterations. I have since been in fairly close correspondence with Jakub, and I hope to share my own project experiences with him.