Kick off Graduation

During the last half year of our third school year, we will start working on the research part of our graduation project. But before we start researching we will have to think of a subject or problem, a direction for us to go in. For our graduation project we are allowed to think of a new product of our own. This product will be designed and made with the goal of making a kickstarter project.

Kickstart is a website where people can ask for crowdfunding by presenting their product ideas. Whenever someone's interested in the idea presented, they can choose to fund your project.

Because I'm doing this for the second time I already made sure I had some ideas in the back of my mind. Last year I made the mistake of choosing a subject that was far to vague. I wanted to make something that would reduce stress. There were so many options and I ended up drowning in my own research. But this year, I came prepared with two solid ideas.

Social Space coffee tables

When I was sitting at my aunt's birthday party, I noticed their coffee table existing of four wooden cubes, like in the picture below;

They used the compartments for blankets, books or magazines but not much else as far as I can remember.

Besides this, there was a bit of a problem with chairs. Because there were so many people they didn't have enough chairs inside the house and because of this they had to get chairs outside and clean them so they could be used inside. That's when I started fantasizing.

What if you could use the compartments of the coffee table to store small chairs? So that when you have a party, people can grab a chair from the table, expand it and take a seat. This way nobody has to stop partying to clean chairs from outside. You don't even have to interrupt your conversation and you won't have the problem of a lot af big empty chairs in the room when people leave.

This idea seemed perfect for a graduation project, not to vague or complicated and leaves enough room for my teachers to crank up the difficulty when it gets too easy.

NonAqua planters

It's a hobby of mine to create self sustaining ecosystems in a jars. I call them ForestJars. The basic idea is that if you keep plants in a closed jar, they will keep reusing the water that's inside.

You add some water and close the jar;

--> The plant drinks the water.

--> The water evaporates from the plant leaves.

--> The water can't leave the jar and condensates against the glass and drips down in the soil.

--> The plant drinks it again.

I started with making forest jars because I was never any good at watering my plants, they always ended up drowned, moldy or dried out. But I still really love plants! Because I know I'm not the only one with this problem, I really want to take my ForestJars to the next level.

What I would really like to do is design some planters that you can close off with glass or maybe plexiglass so you don't have to water them anymore. Because of my hobby, I already know that you can keep plants closed off for at least several months without having to water them, but up until now, I only ever used plants from a forest nearby. I have no clue if you can close off all plants this way. That is something I would like to find out during the research. I want the planters to be appealing to the eye and at the same time as maintenance free as possible. This way, livening up the place can actually be done without everything being dead again after a few weeks.

At first I was really doubting which idea to pick for my graduation project. I found myself leaning towards the first idea because I felt like it would be more appropriate but at the same time I leaned towards the other idea because it came closer to my own interests. I really needed some input from other people. That's why I created the Facebook group Nikki's projects . I posted a poll there to ask for people's opinions, the verdict was very clear;