REALLY RAPID PROTOTYPING SNOWBOARD INVENTIONS, LONDON, Summer 2010
Making crazy prototypes has got to be the most enjoyable part of being inventors! For the Push Snowboarding Project, which you can read about by clicking here, we were asked to spend one month coming up with as many inventions as possible which could sense different parts of the snowboarding experience.
We went away and came up with 30 ideas, and built almost all of them! They included ultrasonic distance detectors, speed guns, knee flex sensors, sweat detectors, super accurate thermometers to measure snow displacement over time, and even hacked optical mice to measure speed!
We went out to various parks in London to try them out, with mixed results, and even went to some artificial ski slopes to see how the conditions affected readings.
It’s so important to have space in projects where things can fail – because that’s when you are free enough to come up with truly original solutions. We always try to get our clients to leave room for this to happen because it never disappoints!
