How to develop creative diy projects

1. What is creativity?

Human's brain is divided in two parts, namely; the right and left brain. The right brain is normally attracted by everything that you can sense; musics, shapes, smells, temperature, tastes, etc... Whereas the left one is like a stock of data and knowledge gathered just like theories, statistics, mathematics, facts, numbers and words, dimensions, sizes and any kind of logical thinkings. Some people may be either left-brained, right-brained or both.

Right-brained people like; Singers, Artist and photographers, tends to be more creative when it comes to create soft arts (rhythms, songs & photos) which normally comes by pure inspiration, feelings, immagination or intuition.

Left and right brain explanations

2. How to start create original products?

However, other jobs like Grapic Designing and Architecture, requires another level of creativity where the right and left brain should work simultaneously. For example, to be able to design a house, the Architect should know all antropometric datas (average body measurements) like; standard sizes of doors, windows, staircase steps, risers and the like. Moreover, available materials also are very important. A simple example can be; the different types and sizes of concrete block available.

Eventually, if you want to be able to create original products, you should start by taking time enriching your left brain by gathering important data such as antropometrics, ergonomics, mathematics, different types and available materials and theories. Normally, the right brain collects its own data easily as you can sense them, and you will see that something you can sense can easily be remembered.

Antropometic data

3. What is the next step?

The next step is much simple as you just have to get in a quiet place, relax and let your feelings and immagination guides you. Get some ideas out of your right brain and start drawing the different ideas on a piece of paper. Everything that you see in your immagination is very important, so try to take a maximum out of your brain.

4. How and when shall your left brain help?

Definitely, your immagination is only the starting point for your project. Now you have choose one or more ideas and merge them into one. If you are wondering how to do this, it is very simple, it comes naturally by elimination. Once you get a design of what you want, you can now start modifying according to the types, sizes of available materials, apply antropometric and ergonomics, and always keep in mind to modify it with a maximum of Aestetics which is very important so that your product attracts everyone's right brain.

5. Development

The development is a process which is less time consuming, once you already know how to build your project. But, development is a very important process where you will have to break your project parts by parts and change/modify where necessary. At this stage, you will see a lot of problems that you may face during the production process and you will be able to solve them by changing or modifying some parts. You should also prepare a list of manufacturing processes in order where necessary to avoid errors.

6. Modelling

Modelling is another process that may be very important when you are creating costly products. In this process you will have to create a mini representative artefact on scale using cheap materials such as cardboard, acrylic, matches, etc.. A model may also be a soft 3D modelling using softwares such as AutoCAD or Google Sketch up where you will be able to turn it around and see how it the different parts works. The most important points shall be, proportion and antropometric check, stability test, aestetic and ergonomic checks, functionality checks, etc.. In some cases, a prototype shall be the best modelling. Prototyping is to produce the exact product but with cheapest materials, just to be able to see how it works at all. Therefore, modify the the prototype itself until it works as intended. Hence, modify the design in the development accordingly and reproduce your final artefact.

3D modelling of D40; Diy product from Meunier Word