Process - Cohesive Coordination

Jonah Stillman

In this project, one of the biggest challenges we faced was ourselves. The sheer number of people working on the project (over 20) is more than any that Nuvu has attempted to coordinate before. The idea of getting 20+ people to work togther in a way that will create a detiled, correct product was intimidating, and the coaches approached this difficult task carefully. We began by working in small groups, on simple "automata" that would serve a single mechanical function, and help us warm up to design work and get us thinking about ideas around mechanical movement, which would be key in the later stages of cart design. After that, we spent a full day talking about the challenges and necessities for a falafel cart, and goals we wanted to achieve with our deisgn. This was a full group discussion, and we concluded by starting to come up with very basic large ideas of a type of cart that we wanted to create.

Onwards, the next few days were a constant recombining of ideas and groups. We had two different ideas, then those groups split into small deicated groups, focused on smaller aspects of their respective carts, then an intervention from the coaches brought us back together and refused the groups, leading to the creation of a singular design that we all agreed upon. The group once again divided into more clear cut roles, and from there on, it was a matter of making sure all the groups could make informed design decisions, and work around and together to create a good model. With minor confusion over measurements, this worked well.