Week 4: Theory and practice of organising teams

IONA [Case Study]

 

Build Your Own Spagetti Cantilever [Exercise]

 

For this exercise, we had to build a cantilever out of spagetti. In all honesty, I didn't know what a cantilever was up until now. (I guess we learn something new each day) We were divided in groups of 5 and our materials for building the cantilever is shown below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

         Resources for cantilever exercise (1)

 

Our group was did not understand the requirements which lead to confusion during the building process, making out task harder. We, as a group, did not understand that the base for the cantilever can be the tables and chairs within the classroom. Our rationale for thinking this was that in the real world, the engineers would not use the existing resources such as buildings of its contractors. Keeping this in mind, the majority of out time was spent on getting the base right because that is the foundation on which the cantilever would be attached to. The foundation has to be strong in order to be able to withstand any external forces. 

 

When it was time for everyone to present, we realized that all the other groups had used desks and chairs to prop their cantilever. And within 2 minutes, we created another cantilever. This new cantilever, in my opinion, was a better than the one we had spend the last half hour or so working on.

 

Alongside, we had to create a 'Design Activity Graph' whereby each member took a step back, didn't provide any input in the building process but only documented the level of thinking the construction was in. The Design Activity Graph looks like this: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                       Design Activity Graph (1)

 

To be honest, I didn't see a point in this and didn't pay much attetion to it mainly because I still hadn't quite grasped the value or working of this particular exercise. 

 

References: (1) http://managingdesignanddevelopment.blogspot.ie/2010/09/guindon-design-activities.html