A software engineer loosely shares what he learned from attending CIID’s IDP course (week 3). This week (3/9~3/13) was a week of learning the basics of electronic devices, with a focus on electrical circuits. This week was more like playing than studying, so this is my main impression. And it’s emotional.
This article is the English version of this below article.
There’s also a post for the week 2, so if you want to read it, please do. There is the link to the English version inside it.
Day 11: Play with electronics!
The first day of classes was so unexpected! As a mechanical engineering major back in college, I was really looking forward to putting together a soldering iron and electrical circuits for the first time in a long time. I was excited to think that it could also do things like the IoT, even if it was just a basic class. But as soon as classes started, I left the lab and walked into the jungle. And then the class began.
Seeing the complexity of the world for real
At the beginning of this class, he taught us that a designer is not a person who makes things simpler, but a person who makes a complex world more visible. This was a very interesting way of thinking for me.
When I read design guidelines from Google, Apple, and others, I think I see the word “simple” all the time. Or maybe I just assumed that I was following their design. After reading these design guidelines, I was thinking that when I design an app or website in Japan, I should keep it simple. I don’t think there is much wrong with this way of thinking. However, I think the approach is a little different. The teacher’s main premise is to “properly recognize the complexity of the world,” and from there, he asks, “How can we make it easier to understand? We believe that design is the answer to the question, “What do you want to do? When I was in Japan, the design I was doing was like, “This is simpler! I think it was because I was under the impression that “I’m not going to do this.
It made me think that the important thing is not to make it uselessly simple, but to understand why it’s complicated. Throughout the week, I felt that being in nature was a more interesting place to experience the complexity than I had imagined.
You can’t have fun without having fun
I was taught that the key to doing electronics is to be “Be happy, curious and energetic. Then, afterwards, the teacher grinned and came out with the assignment of the day. It was titled “If you can seduce a female firefly in the jungle at night, you win”. The summary of the project is “Go to the riverside at night and build a circuit to bring in fireflies using LEDs”. It’s just that most of my classmates started laughing at the words “seducing the female firefly”. I think there are very few teachers like this not only in Japan, but all over the world. Anyway, they come up with assignments in a way that makes us happy or tickles our curiosity.
Because of that, I look into a lot of things besides electronics. “What color of light does the female firefly come from?”, “How often do the male fireflies glow?”, “How big is the best size to light by the river?” and “How big is the best size to light by the river?” and so on. I made the following LED circuit to carry it around.
So after dinner we actually went to the riverside and had a “firefly temptation contest”. Later, I look back at the photos and think I was being an asshole. However, everyone enjoyed watching the fireflies come together using the circuits they had researched and made by themselves. To be honest, I had never faced electronics like this before, and I naturally felt that electronics was a distant existence. However, I never thought that assembling electronic circuits would be so much fun if I could just change the subject slightly. And I didn’t think I could work so hard to assemble an electronic circuit. I learned from this teacher that the most important thing in manufacturing is to have fun.
Day 12: Electronic components
On this day, we were given more electronic parts than the day before and had to make more. We also learned how to write electronic circuits and actually made a circuit while writing electronic circuits. In doing so, I’ll leave you with a conversation that made an impression on me after being told by my teacher.
Calculating isn’t engineering.
I don’t know if it’s because I’m a science graduate, but these words made a great impression on me. When I was a college student, I probably spent most of my time in class and in the lab doing calculations using computers and functional calculators. I spent those four years getting a degree in mechanical engineering.
However, this week’s teacher comes urging us to assemble the circuit anyway. Before you learn how to draw a schematic, you must first assemble it. When you do that, naturally things will come up that won’t work. In our case, we had a problem where we connected the speaker to the battery, but no sound came out. Then, naturally, we started investigating how the speaker works. Then I realized that the speaker produces sound by vibrating the air due to the magnetic field caused by the on/off of the current. So, our team decided to make a circuit that turns the current on and off at high speed to produce sound, using a combination of a motor and a magnetic sensor. Then I was able to get the sound out of the speakers, although it was just a buzzing sound. The photo below shows the circuit we made.
To tell you the truth, I broke one LED before I completed the circuit of the above picture. At the time, I wondered, “Why did it break?” I thought about it with my teammates and actually wrote a circuit diagram and calculated the current. The cause was the supply of too much current. Therefore, we were able to achieve normal operation by adding a resistor.
I think we learned a lot on this day by repeating glitches and failures. The way I studied in college, I ended up writing the circuits on paper. In that circuit, I don’t think I realized the principles of the speaker or the caveats of the LED. Moreover, this time I had a circuit that I wanted to make, so I had a clear purpose for making the circuit, and it was a lot of fun. Furthermore, although I didn’t feel it much in college, I did feel, in a small way, that I was doing engineering.
Get out of the lab.
On this day, the teacher handed out solar panels to each team and asked them to “build a circuit outside”. Furthermore, he told me that a product that was perfected in the lab would not work in a real-world environment. I was able to experience something that embodied that right away.
Initially, our team was calculating the maximum voltage for the solar panels. He then calculated the resistance so that the motor would run at that voltage. However, the actual environment wasn’t sunny all the time, and it was often cloudy and the voltage was often insufficient. I think it’s something you can notice if you think about it a little bit. However, the people who were doing the calculations didn’t have that in their minds at all. I was rather pleased to take the finished circuit outside. I wondered if this was exactly what the teacher had meant. It’s true, in a laboratory (indoor), we tend to think in an ideal environment. However, I think there are few ideal conditions in the actual usage environment.
I’ll also share some of the teacher’s failures that the teacher told me at the end of the day. It seems that the teacher used to study the behavioral patterns of ants, and he had created a program to automatically monitor their behavior. And that program, which worked perfectly in the lab, didn’t work at all in nature. This is because in the lab we were only doing two-dimensional behavioral monitoring, but in nature it makes no sense at all without three-dimensional monitoring.
It’s a natural thing to do, but the people who are doing it are so absorbed in the work in front of them that they’ve completely forgotten about it. So I was able to experience that being able to make things in an actual environment is the most powerful thing. I thought I’d take the phrase “get out of the lab (ideal environment)” to heart.
Day 13: More nature
I was kicked out of the lab as soon as possible on this day. The theme for the day was to build a sensor to measure nature using natural objects. Our team made a sensor that makes the bamboo clatter when the wind blows. The general idea is that when a magnet swaying in the wind approaches, the magnetic sensor is triggered and the motor connected to the circuit begins to turn. The wooden sticks attached to the motor beat the bamboo with a clattering sound. In terms of level, I think it’s elementary school art. Nevertheless, I’ve put together a list of things that stuck with me.
A lot of things require a decision.
Because it’s so complex in nature, there are so many choices. When it comes to using natural objects, there are various plants and insects, and it is very difficult to decide which one to use to make a sensor. And even after you’ve decided which one to use, there are even more ways to do things like where to collect data and how to do it. Even so, we are expected to make our own decisions and move forward. I don’t know if I got it right on this day, but I did what I was taught to do, which is to try to shape it first.
When I told my teacher about these feelings after class, she told me that there are so many things that require decisions. And, “Up until now, scientists have made their own decisions about subjects and experimental methods to move the technology forward. He said on an even larger scale.
To be honest, I was surprised that it was on such a large scale, but I’m glad we were able to talk about it. I thought that this teacher is a scientist, but his thinking is almost the same as that of a designer. Scientists also see the complex world and try to derive something from it, which is similar to what CIID is trying to achieve as a designer. And I think this teacher is making a lot of decisions in terms of “actually making something and trying it out”. And I think that’s what I was taught in the first week, “As long as you’re moving forward, you’re minimizing risk.
You decide what you want to make. It’s up to you to decide what kind of environment you want to choose. I’ll try it. On this day, I talked to my teacher and was reminded of the importance of “deciding” and “trying”. It was a day when I realized that nature (the real world) is complex and full of choices. (I’m sorry the learning isn’t practical…)
Day 14: More, more and more nature
On this day, we were finally told that I didn’t have to be in the lab. We were in the lab for about an hour to assemble the circuit, but we were mostly walking around in the jungle. The theme for the day was “Observing Nature’s Questions Using Electronic Circuits”.
The experiment rarely works.
We walked around the jungle and found that the resistance of the bamboo was constantly changing. We thought it was very interesting and tried to visualize the fluid resistance of the bamboo using LEDs. When I came up with this idea, I thought it was very interesting and I was relieved that it would make a good presentation. However, when we actually built the circuit, the battery voltage was too low to provide enough current for the LED to emit light. At this time, I feel good that I was able to prototype and experiment right away. The teacher and previous classes had told me to try anyway, so making it right away and finding out it wasn’t working was very helpful for me to rethink my plans after this. Our team hastily switched to a B plan to collect data.
However, after this day’s class, I wasn’t satisfied, so I went to the lab by myself and tried to assemble and test a circuit with parallel batteries to ensure enough current, and recombined it with an LED that issues at a lower current. And it didn’t all work out. I think I was a little excited about the things I could do in theory, but couldn’t. And now that I think about it, I think the first idea sounded interesting and I stuck to it. However, as I mentioned above, I experienced firsthand that what works in the calculation does not go as ideal. And I can only thank my teammates for not sticking to one idea, accepting failure and flexibly changing the plan.
Expanding the small questions
When I first came up with the B plan, I didn’t think it was very interesting compared to the bamboo plan. However, when I repeated the experiment, I made some interesting discoveries. I’ve found that even plants that look dead on the outside can be judged if they’re really dead when electricity is passed through them. It was something I really just happened to find. When I was investigating the conductivity of various plants, I found one that was the same plant but had no conductivity, and when I was trying to figure out why, I realized that it was because it had withered.
After first finding the question “the same plant, but it’s conducive and non-conducive”, I finally managed to arrive at (I don’t know if it’s the right conclusion) “because the plant is dead”. But at the beginning, the teacher said, “That’s the best inspiration! It was very impressive to hear him say, “I’m so happy to be here. Do you dismiss small questions as “coincidences” or “That’s interesting! I felt like it would change the possibilities I could get. Also, I don’t think the level of what I’m doing is as low as it was in college, and I don’t think certain equipment is as good. However, I was able to experience how fun it is to take a small hypothesis as a starting point, calculate it, give it shape, and try it out. Maybe this is what my teacher was trying to teach me about “getting out of the lab”. (Maybe I’m just getting excited.)
Day 15: Presentation
This was the day to announce the project of the week. We gave a presentation about studying the conductivity of leaves. Rather than a project, it became more like an elementary school science class presentation. The presentation materials are listed below. (I’m sorry I couldn’t show you the video due to authorization…)
This week, I feel like I’ve learned less about electronics and more about the importance of prototyping on the fly. We don’t make prototypes, but we make something immediately in that environment and take the data. I felt that this repetition would lead to a quick improvement.
And most of all, I think this week’s teacher made this lesson very interesting. I call this teacher a nature nerd and robotics major, a scientist and engineer. Below is the person’s website.
This teacher dives into nature anyway. I think I spend more time in the jungle than I do with my students. I make my own tools necessary for electronic circuits so that I can work right away in the jungle. This doctor opens his mouth and says, “You can stay in the room and you won’t know a thing! There’s a lot of inspiration rolling around in nature! says. I felt that he is a practitioner of Life Center Design, which is what CIID is trying to achieve. And it taught me that the mindset of a designer and a scientist is the same. I think “I learned how to think from this person” was the biggest takeaway from this week, and has had a huge impact on my future thinking.
Last but not least, here are some links to useful videos about electronics, which my friend show me.
There’s also a post for the week 4, so if you want to read it, please do. There is the link to the English version inside it.