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MDEFest Challenge

Course Details

Name: MDEFest Challenge (Micro Challenge III)

Dates: 20 May to 23 May 2025

Faculty: Santiago Fuentemilla Garriga & many more

Overview

For this micro challenge, we were focusing very specifically on creating an artifact for the MDEFestival in a few weeks. The goal was to create an interactive object that would be important for our activation during the festival. I had already started the process of creating my mended laptop, so the challenge was an opportunity to continue that process. The goal was to end the week with an interactive laptop that had both the 'trackpad' and the 'screen' elements completed so that it was recognizable as a laptop.

The result form the week did not completely live up to these expectations, as is apparent from the Hackster.io documentation below, but it was a good chance to make more progress on the project overall.

MDEF Final Project GitHub
Mend your Laptop Hackster.io

Reflection

As with the other micro challenges, I had the opportunity, once again, to learn that everything takes longer than you expect it will when making. I started with a pretty clear plan of what I wanted to accomplish during the challenge and almost immediately ran into problems meeting those goals.

I defined a few Key Performance Indicators as was assigned in preparation for the start of the challenge.

  • Ecosystem Integration: Can someone write a short explanation of the purpose of the project, including the repair and anti-productivity messages, that shows their understanding of the system overall?
  • Data & Feedback Loops: Does the artifact respond to input from the user and output a response? - Touch of trackpad = lights LEDs and creates sounds
  • Making & Materiality: Does the laptop use more than 75% old/discarded materials? Does it embody the ideas of 'repair' even while not making the objects functional in their original way?
  • Intelligences: Does someone know how to interact with the object without an explanation of what it is or how it works or why?
  • Sensor Interfact: Does it look like a laptop in a recognizable way?

While I feel I fell short of many of these, by defining them, I at least acknowledged my own ambition. I had hoped to have the laptop together in a recognizable way by the end of the challenge, with a 'screen' that responded visually to the touches on the 'trackpad'. Instead, by the end, I had a half functioning 'trackpad' that creates a visual response with LEDs and some sounds when pressed in certain places. All of this is still on a breadboard, still outside of the laptop case the way I had envisioned it. However, I did make progress that I would not have were we not given a week dedicated to working on our artifact.

Also during the week, I started trying to figure out the specific logistics of my activation during the MDEFest itself. I have gone through many iterations of my ideas for the festival itself. As so often happens when projects take longer than one had hoped, the plans likely will have to change as reality makes it clear that the ambitions I had of making many different objects likely will not play out.