Capstone Project Log #2

After school, my colleagues and I took Bart public transportation to visit Barry once again for a discussion and meeting following up on our work progress since the last time we saw him.

Our ideas were mostly brainstormed outside of the meeting and our early concepts and ideas were introduced with one another. Much of our time was spent sharing our designs and finishing our sketches.

Our work will continue over the next few weeks, but we may be shadowing him soon in the works. In this session, our mentor officially named us his interns and we may be given some work to help him out with his own.

Hours Today  3

Hours Total  5

*Since we were downtown, why not?

Fiscal Cliff Response

In the "Fiscal Cliff" conflict, the Democrats and the Republicans had two sides of responses. The Democrats wanted a mix of spending cuts and tax increases. The Republicans wanted to cut spending and avoid raising taxes. Both parties seem to want the exact opposite, and seek a different solution from one another. In these choices of resolution, the growth of the economy may be pressured but no economic downturn.

I conducted my research through a Google search. Using quotations to narrow down my search, I began sifting through articles, I read an article of the Huffington Post to introduce myself to the subject. I also took a quick look on a Wikipedia article about the Fiscal Cliff to learn what it actually was. Finishing the matter, I looked at About.com Bond's "What is the Fiscal Cliff?" article, and learned the positions of both sides on the issue, which was the most useful to formulate my response.

Sources

http://bonds.about.com/od/Issues-in-the-News/a/What-Is-The-Fiscal-Cliff.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_fiscal_cliff
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/fiscal-cliff-deal_n_2438972.html

Capstone Project Log #1

Today I went to San Francisco and met with my mentor, Barry Lai. He works in the industrial design industry for the banking company Chase. Barry also founded his own company called Design Rehab. Along with my colleagues Charles (South San Francisco High School) and Brad (El Camino High School), we discussed our ideas with each other. Barry educated us and taught us a lesson on planning your work before the actual step of branding and design. Most of our day was spent brainstorming ideas for what we are planning to do for our project.

Our discussions were geared towards smartphone applications and designing a possible game or utility for our physical project. Our hours weren't that long, but I felt like I learned a great deal from this one lesson. This is just the beginning so expect to see a lot more in the near future.

Hours Today  2

Hours Total  2

*A photo that was taken during our lesson, photographed by yours truly.

My First Mentor Letter Sent!

It seems that http://conceptart.org has been shut down for "malware", so my search through that site had ended. I moved on and started looking through deviantArt, one of the biggest public art galleries and forums on the internet, since I was already familiar with using it before.

Today, I sent out a letter to a potential mentor on deviantArt, going by the username LazarusReturns. I found him through his deviants and saw how closely it resembled what I wanted to do, so I revised and rewrote my mentor letter and messaged him. 

Hopefully I see a reply with the answer i'm expecting soon. I'm running out of time and I am going to start when I am confirmed a mentor.