Design Sketching

by BOB COULTER

Technology for Learning I

Examples of Home

Here I’d like to explore how SketchUp can foster greater appreciation of the design elements that underlie many fields from architecture to product design. A quick look around your home, school, and neighborhood will reveal a range of approaches from basic functionalism to quite elaborate creations. Iconic design examples such as Apple computers and IKEA furniture can be studied, with students asked to consider what they find appealing and how different choices convey different messages. For example, how do rounded corners on a computer compare to a more “boxy” look? How does an aluminum case compare to a plastic one? Designers need to consider a range of techni- cal and creative issues, including shape, scale, and materials. With the right support, your students can become increasingly aware of the role of design in their world, and gain experience building a personal design aesthetic. Through fusing the artistic and engineering worlds, tools like SketchUp allow stu-

dents with diverse strengths to join together to build original creations. The ease with which revisions can be made in SketchUp gives your apprentice designers a chance to make iterative changes as they improve their work. Note that this doesn’t have to come at the expense of the “basics.” Throughout, students will be applying a range of mathe- matical skills as they work with geometric shapes, scale, and measurement. While they are at it, they build their career awareness. To the extent you can build a studio environ- ment in which students provide peer critique, they will also be developing critically important language and interpersonal skills. Taken together, not a bad set of benefits. To illustrate design at work, consider a basic bench you can model in SketchUp as

just one possibility. You can download the directions for this project in the free sampler for Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual from O’Reilly. Since this is fairly complex software, be sure to give yourself the time to become comfortable with the interface before you try to support your students.

Step-by-Step Design

As the students build the bench, they will first create a seat, and then a leg. They will duplicate the leg, and finally make a support beam. They will then be challenged to align the pieces so they are level and balanced. Imagine the challenge in using a bench where the legs weren’t placed appropriately! After the bench is designed, they can use a variety of materials to simulate a painted or natural wood bench. Returning to the design studio model, students can be challenged to compare and contrast their creation with real-world examples. How does their model bench compare with benches around

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n a previous column (“Sketching a Path into Geometry,” March/April 2007), I sug- gested that you might consider Google SketchUp as a free tool for your students to

explore geometric relationships. Too often, geometry is presented as a set of formal abstractions separated from our real world experience. Through building original models, these core geometric ideas can be grounded in meaningful projects. Symme- try becomes important when you want to have the sides of your house look balanced, and parallel lines are important if you want your windows to align with each other. SketchUp can make geometry come alive in your classroom.