Throughout my engineering career, I have been a part of many design processes, some successful and others, partial.  One common trait throughout both is that they all have an end vision and goal that my team and I are reaching towards.  The large discrepancy between success and partial success is how much these visions change and if I am able to achieve the desired goal.  This is one aspect of “scope creep”, and is often how my projects get derailed.

For my upcycle project, I have a vision of a function and an aesthetic that I’d like to achieve: a rustic, vintage, country type feel related to skiing.  However, as I continue to build it, this vision changes slightly.   My goal is to keep the requirements and vision as steady as possible throughout all iterations and stages.

In my first design process sketch seen below, you will notice there are arrows constantly pointing backwards to re-iterate any steps that are needed.  I believe this is the ideal way to design items.  In this image, the more lines that are around the text, the more disorder and confusion that is associated with that phase.

For this particular project, it seems like my design process looks like this:

I keep getting sidetracked, new design challenges arise, and the final idea slowly changes.  Nevertheless, I try to keep my vision (includes function and aesthetic) relatively close to the original.

Certain design struggles (wood warping, tears in maps) have forced me to adapt and figure out new ways to still achieve my vision.

I am sticking with reclaimed, rustic wood and will keep it within the ski motif.