Assignment: Plan and sketch a potential final project

Here's my sketch:



Motivation: I want to make a smart surfboard. Surfers are weird. They don't want to admit they're afraid of sharks, even though they are. They don't want to admit they care about their performance on waves, even though they do. And they don't like virtue signaling, even though they often care deeply about the environment.

Plan: To learn the principles of fabrication while building a surfboard that meets four goals - 1) shark safety, 2) performance feedback, potentially through in-built sensors, 3) sustainable materials without compromising quality, and 4) background data collection on water quality and the ocean's bathometry to feed to third parties like researchers and local councils.

Challenge: My preliminary research is making me think this might be a bit too ambitious given how little experience I have in making stuff... I've been drawing inspiration from this cool fablab project, but these guys had more of a background in fabrication.

Backup plan: Smart fins.

Assignment: Model (raster, vector, 2D, 3D, render, animate, simulate, ...) a possible final project
Status: INCOMPLETE