The very initial vague clue about my plan was that I just created my logo the week before the Spring semester started. It’s a combination of the character of my first name and last name(Andrea Wang) as AW.

Here are the initial rough design of my logos on Figma(iterating in progress):

The product I want to make is simply heavily inspired by the cardboard smartphone stand-making tutorial on Youtube(link). But I would prefer another material than cardboard for me to make my smartphone stand and have better sustainability and quality of use. It would be something like wood, or metal with some solid decoration that can be easily approached on or off campus.

At the first glance of the word “Upcycle”, I directly connected this word to the word “Recycle”. To my knowledge, I should build something that uses recycled materials and made them meaningful to me and my daily life. And the followings are rough paper sketches I did for its look.

Upon receiving the location of all the abandoned treasures somewhere underground on campus, I went on an exploration and found a nice solid wood board, I guessed it was once used as a desk in the EC building.

I picked up the wood and went to the BTU lab’s wood-making workshop orientation. This was the first time that I used any kind of saw. The sound was scarring at first, but soon I found wood making was quite satisfying, especially for the moment you see your rough material being polished and becomes very smooth.