Tuesday, May 28, 2019

Day 9: U of M students turned Santa's elves

Today we had what we considered a leisurely start to our morning with breakfast at 8:15. We read over our blogs and had heartwarming discussions reflecting on our trip thus far. We then prepared for our adventure of the day, a trip to Varnam Craft Collective. They are a small business in Bangalore employing women artisans and use fair trade products.
Today we had what we considered a leisurely start to our morning with breakfast at 8:15. We read over our blogs and had heartwarming discussions reflecting on our trip thus far. We then prepared for our adventure of the day, a trip to Varnam Craft Collective. They are a small business in Bangalore employing women artisans and use fair trade products.

It was a small store with toys, clothes, jewelry, and other household knick-knacks. It was much different than the bustling street markets we’ve been experiencing. Our objective was to check out their toy collection to gain inspiration to create our own toy to practice the design process. We all had a fun time shopping around buying some toys for our project today as well as some souvenirs. The products in the store were a little more expensive than what we see in the markets, but it always feels good to support a small business when you have the means.


When we returned to UTC, we began our activity of practicing the design process, so we can apply it to our larger projects. Using the toys we bought as inspiration, we started brainstorming a toy we could make out of things we may find around campus.



Once we had done that, we ventured outside to see what materials we could scrape up to use. It was fun walking around our campus thinking what children’s toy we could make from sticks, leaves, coconuts, etc. It really got us thinking simply about every step of the design process which I think will help as we dive deeper into our projects. When we finished collecting our material, we began crafting our first “prototype.”


With our finished toys, we’ll head tomorrow to Cubbon Park to see what our stakeholders (kids!) think of our products. Since we all know kids can be brutality honest, we expect good feedback. Wish us luck!

--
Haley D.