I started with by doing mind maps with associations to the words in the prompt. Then, I came up with more ideas through emotive keyword association and unrelated object association, which are two out of the four methods we learned previously in Week 3.  I also made some small icon-like sketches just based off things I like, like animals and mushrooms. Eventually, I decided on going with a mobile phone dock based off an actual boat dock, drawing a parallel to how charging your phone (energizing it) and letting it rest is akin to how boats make a pit stop at docks.

My ideation pages can be found here: Ideation

These are some interesting mobile phone docks I found beforehand. I really liked how sleek the first five phone docks here are, and I tried to emulate some of that in my ideation with emotive keyword association. I also really liked how warm the wood feels in the last four mobile docks, and wanted to use wood for my final piece.

After the ideation, I tried to decide between the bed-like dock (for your phone to rest while you lay in bed and rest too, as most people charge their phones when they go to sleep), and the boat-like dock.I eventually went with the boat-dock idea because I realized that it had the same rest-for-your-phone connotation like the bed-dock too, on top of the the terrible pun (and also because I’m a sucker for bad puns).

On to making my first model!

I first cut out the “planks”, and then the beams, I sanded the  beams down to misshapen cylinders, too – I didn’t make them very well but I figured that I did not need to strive for complete perfection as this was just a “first draft”. The photos that are thumbnail sized have a smaller phone foam block for a relative size comparison to an actual phone.