Sunday 26th January 2014 

Without working on plan stage since Thursday, I had a lot of work to do today. First of all, I finished up with my production plan and then moved on to the gannt chart. I found it quite difficult and longer to do it on the computer so I decided to do it by hand. The gannt chart was a very fun part of the plan stage since it was a visual representation and was interesting to make. After the gannt chart, was the exploded drawing which till now was the hardest part of the plan stage. This was our first time doing exploded drawing therefore I had no clue of how to draw one although I knew what It was. I tried many times but it never came out correct in which sometimes it came out small, some of them were to congested etc. I finally learn't how to draw an exploded drawing with the help of my brother since he has done exploded drawing before. He just showed me an example and drew for me a rough sketch, which I used to draw a nice one later on, although I was still stubborn and had that feeling that It wasn't correct.

After doing the exploded drawing, I moved on to the materials list which I also got stuck and confused on but I referred to a sample which made me know what to do. The materials list only took me 15 minutes since I had very few materials and only had to refer to my exploded drawing to fill in the materials list. At 7 in the night, I had began to start on the evaluation of my plan. For the evaluation, I had to comment on the time given for each task, resources, skills and other areas and had to suggest improvements to the plan. Evaluating the plan boosted my confidence as it relieved my stress as I was often worried whether I will be able to finish making my rack in time, the resources I will need and stuff however by evaluating the plan helped me understand and know that If I follow this plan, I will be able to make the rack successfully. I learn't and developed my evaluating skills, planning skills, graphing skills and designing skills. What I have o improve on is to not procrastinate in the following stages especially create stage.The plan stage was finally over and now we were of for create stage which is the most fun and the best stage in Design technology.

Thursday 23rd January 2014

After accomplishing the design stage, we now moved on to the third part of the create process which is the plan stage. On Tuesday, Mr Wafula explained to us about what is required in the plan stage and also showed us some samples of previous plan stages done by other people. However we hardly did any work on Tuesday and Wednesday since on one day there was no power and the other day there were no computers available although I managed to do a rough brief basic plan that was handwritten to be aware of my steps. Since the plan stage is due on Tuesday meaning I only have about four days to finish I had to start by today. By the end of this lesson, I managed to reach 3/4 of my production plan in which I indicated different tasks, the duration for each task, skills required, materials, tools and safety hazards.

The challenging part was filling in the column of safety hazards for each task since some were hard to explain or write down and it was hard to fin an appropriate safety measure for each task. I overcame this by imagining myself doing that task and trying to be aware of the things that may be dangerous or I have to take concern of. This helped me get many to write down. The skills that I was able to utilize were my planning skills, organizational skills, IT skills (to make my production plan on the computer) and time management skills.I still have to finish with the production plan, make a gannt chart, exploded design, materials list and plan evaluation which already gives me a lot of tension from now. I was glad that I am almost done with my production plan as it is like the building blocks of a building which in this case is the plan stage as once I am done with the production plan, the rest of the tasks left will more or less become easy.

Sunday 19th January 2014

With no tension or stress, I evaluated the third design which was very easy as I had been doing it for all the designs. Personally, I liked evaluating the design because for me the third design was the best and had lots of different ideas that I wanted to speak about in the evaluation. The evaluation just took me about 45 minutes in which I was able to evaluate the design against the design specs thoroughly and with full focus allowing me to explain nicely with appropriate reasoning's. After that was the most difficult part of design stage according to me, which was to choose a design for my final product and justify my choice. It was very difficult and challenging to choose one of the designs as all were of good quality and all seemed nice to me. Although, I considered many things before making my final decision such as resources available, design specs, whether it is simple or hard to make etc. I also took the help of my client (My mum) to help me choose a design that she personally liked and why. For the justification, I wrote why I chose that design, why I didn't choose the others and the improvements that I would like to make to my chosen design. Atlas, I was done with design stage eventually making up my mind that I will go with design 1. I used my decision-making, evaluating and justifying skills to help me work with the remaining tasks today. Next lessons, we will be starting off with our plan stage.

Saturday 18th January 2014

Knowing that design stage was due on Monday, I woke up early on a Saturday morning to get off with my third and final design. I had a look at my investigate stage to get ideas of my third design. This is when I found a picture of a rack that really interested me. I decided that it would be my third design although I made a few changes from the picture to make my design more or less original. This time, I didn't draw a sketch as I felt that I didn't need one and went straight to designing it. However, whilst I drew the design I discovered the importance of sketching as I made quite many mistakes and errors which I rectified but still made me waste time. Drawing the design was actually a bit difficult than it looked like however my experience, knowledge and skills helped me overcome these challenges.After the design was drawn, I took a break and got back to labeling and indicating things on my design, which gave it a sense of professionalism and made it more detailed. This included measurements, wood joints, name of part e.g barrier etc. Later on, I tested the design against the design specs. Testing the design was a quite fun task since it allowed me to reflect and judge on my design and help me know whether the design was successful or did it fail. Today, I was felt relieved and glad that I was done with my final design.The challenges that I came across was that I was confused and made quite many mistakes to do with the designs since I hadn't done a sketch/ draft of the design. I overcame this by seeking the help of my brother who has done dt before and gave me ideas and suggestions on what I can do. In addition, I learn't and worked on my drawing, solving, testing and designing skills. For tomorrow, I have to evaluate the third design and write/type a justification to justify my final choice.

Thursday 16th January 2014

Today, we continued with our designs in the dt lab. Mr Wafula later in the lesson also told us that the design stage will be due on Monday. When Mr Wafula said that I got stressed and immediately got into work. Honestly, I did so muck wok today that really chilled me down. Last lesson, I had drawn the second design so today, I labelled my design and also drew and indicated the wood joints that would be used in that particular rack. The second design was a more complex design than the first one although first design took very long to finish since it was the first design and was clueless and what to add and do in the designs.I referred to my first design a lot for the second design which gave me guidance on what I need to add and what I have left out. After labeling my design I moved on to testing the design against the design specs which took me only 10 minutes. I had the table of the design specs and the scoring column already printed out which I stuck on the design and only had to fill it out. With time still left I started evaluating my design but soon it was time. I was more than satisfied with what I had done today and also finished evaluating the design by the end of the day so that I would not forget about the points I wanted to include in the evaluation. The skills that I worked and improved on were time-management, organizational, labeling, evaluating, testing and designing skills.

Wednesday the 15th January 2014

Yesterday I had finished with my first design and had to move on to my second design today. For the first ten minutes I was thinking of an idea for my second design until I remembered one of the fruit racks I had seen in IKEA London. Immediately I took a scrap paper and drew sketches of my second design. When I was confident with my sketch I started drawing on the A3 paper. When I was halfway with my design I realized I was going wrong since the angle I had been drawing the rack from was not correct. Therefore I had to do a rough design again and double checked it and then went back to drawing the final design. This was a very challenging design since it was very unique one as it would have 3 cylindrical compartments. It is not only difficult to make but was also hard to draw. I made a couple of mistakes though I rectified them. I also got frustrated at some moments when the design didn't look like how i wanted it to be, and felt like just crumbling and throwing the paper away. However, at the end of the lesson I looked at my design and was very impressed with the design I had done and gave me confident that I am capable of drawing and designing which I thought I was horrible in. I also took some time finding appropriate and valid measurements for this rack since it was unique and different than the others. This lesson I developed my creativity skills, artistic and sketching skills and open minded skills and also tried to bring more originality in my work. Next lesson, I would like to label my designs and probably also test and would like to improve on my intrapersonal skills since I often get distracted by my peers therefore I have to focus on my work more and try to work individually.

Tuesday the 14th of January 2014

With time not on my side, I had to do a lot today to catch up with the others since I had not done anything over the weekend. Last lesson, I had finish drawing my first design therefore today I was able to manage to test and evaluate the design against the design specs.It was kind of hard to test the design with the design specs since we had to give appropriate marks and be as fair as possible. I tested the design using pass, partial and fail with each design spec scoring a mark out of 10. In order to test my design I had to refer to the design often and also be honest in scoring, as possible. Testing the design with the design specs took me about 10 -15 minutes. After testing my design, I moved on to evaluating the design, which with the help of the testing aided me to evaluate thoroughly going deep into each aspect of the design. Throughout this lesson I was able to learn and develop my decision-making skills, judgement skills and evaluating skills.I was glad that I had finally finished my first design since it is said that the first design is the hardest and takes the longest. Since, I now have a clue of what I now have to do in my other designs, I will try lift up my pace during the other lessons and will try improve on my time-management skills so that I can spend more time on working on my designs so that they come out of excellent quality. My first design is like a normal rack with 3 compartments more or less looking like a shelf with wheels. 

Thursday the 9th of January 2014

Once again, we were back to work. Today I saw my design and it looked quite empty and not understandable. Therefore I started bring more meaning to the design and making it more clear by labeling it, showing the measurements, drawing and showing the types of joints and adhesives that will be used and where, colors that will be used etc. If I were to compare the design of how it looked like before and now, there was a big change. Mr. Gioko's said that a good design is something that can also be used by someone else to make the product. This meant that it should be clear and understandable which was exactly what I enforced in my design. The challenge that I had was to draw how my wood joints that I will use look like in the rack or how they will be made. I overcame this by finding pictures on the laptop that showed how the joints that I am going to use fit in different places and how. This gave me ways of fitting the joints that I would like to use in the appropriate and relevant places. By the end of the lesson, I was more than happy with my work and Mr. Wafula also said " looks like somebody is doing hardwork"  which really gave me motivation and courage to continue. I was now left with testing my design with the design specs and evaluation against the design specs to finish with my first design. I now found design stage really as what I though; interesting and fun. 

Wednesday 8th January 2014

It was the second day since we started the design stage. Been given two weeks we are suppose to make three designs, evaluate each against the design specs and finally justify your final choice. This means I have to work quickly with a lot of focus. Last lesson I had drawn my design roughly in a note book. So today, I started off by drawing my first design on the A3 paper. I had to be very careful when taking measurements and drawing my design so it would exactly depict how I wanted my product to look like. To draw my design  it took almost the whole lesson, since I it was difficult to draw my rack in 3-d though I then managed later on by viewing how other people did theirs. I also made quite a few mistakes which also slowed me down. The challenges that I faced were to draw the designs in 3-d and to bring out my design specs on the design. However I asked my friends and went back to the research that I had done in the investigate stage to get ideas. The skills that were out into action today were; artistic skills, designing skills and sketching skills that were applied when drawing my designs. What I want to improve on next time is to try avoid making mistakes as it makes the paper look dirty. I feel I worked a bit slow today therefore I will try lifting up my pace so that I get moving. At the end of the class, I was satisfied with the level of work I dad done today and looked forward to continue my designs.

Tuesday the 7th January 2014

Today was the first school day after the break and as well as the first d.t lesson. Before the break we had finished off with the investigate and with no time to spare we were off with our design stage today. According to me the design stage is a very fun stage as there is a lot of sketching. It makes me feel as if I am an professional. Though this time will be a bit more difficult since we are now in class 8 hence we have more expectations and the task is more difficult to sketch and detail then last time. However I am confident to do my designs since I already have so many ideas and plans for what my fruit/vegetable rack will be, hence i just have to jot it down on paper. Today we had a look at couple of designs from previous classes. This made it even more clear on what we have to do to reach certain grades. I grew excited and immediately took my notebook and started drawing rough sketches of my rack and giving approximate measurements. I didn't start straight away on the A3 paper as I know that first I have to be aware of what I will be drawing so I don't waste the paper or mess it. I struggled a bit on the measurements as some went over the limit which was 15,000 cm cubed. I managed to use the help of my friends to rectify and show corrections to what I should do in my designs. Now I was fully prepared to start off with my actual designs.