Luke Firth PDP 4

7/30/2019 Luke Firth PDP 4

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Personal Development Plan 4Luke Anthony Firth1011091

July 2013

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bit.ly/lukefrth-pdp4


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Involved With Since Last PDPIn Work

My main areas of work whilst at Aktiva over the past few months have been spread across a number of different

projects in the run up to my leaving Aktiva. My major project work throughout the year based around the B

Square LED tting has thankfully started to come to an end of its major development phase as my year closesout. This has kept me busy liaising with manufacturers to get accurate tooling and manufacture costs as well as

establishing sources for the components that will be bought in and building a nal summary of the cost to Aktiva

to manufacture each tting under its generic setup. Alongside this I have been attempting to nail down the dif-

ferent setups that may be used and establishing some costs on those too.

When not working on B Square LED I have been splitting my time between work on a new lower temperature

Square One Emergency Ceiling tting (making on the spot changes even during the assembly process to ensure

the tting has the best lifetime possible) and a oversized Round Three LED (AR111 Lamp) tting for a London

Library job.

For a week during the last month my immediate supervisor (head of design at Aktiva) has been away from the

ofce and so I have been keeping atop some of his responsibilities as well as his email (especially important as

included ltering applications made for the new design role at Aktiva).

Outside Of Work

A goal from previous PDPs - to have work ready for website has been a major focussing point for me during this

last PDP period and now my personal website has been taken live (www.lukerth.co.uk) and is now my main

online presence for design work. This has taken a lot of practice and work with HTML5 and CSS in conjunction

with a web design template provided by a third party website and as a result I am now much more condent

when approaching web design tasks.

With nal year only a few short months away however I have been involved heavily in trying to create a suitable

idea for major project through research (visiting the design exhibitions) and with other students bouncing ideas

around in a group workshop type scenario. So far I have two ideas that I am reasonable condent in as a result.

Establishing B Square LED Variations - Recessed, Pendant, Book, Desk Finalising B Square LED Drawings With Manufacturers.

Conducting Photometrics and design of new variation tting for London Library

Overseeing rst run of Square One Ceiling Emergency tting designed by myself.

Preparing all my projects for handover to either the next placement student or new

permanent staff member.

Research on module choices for nal year at Brunel.

Attending design exhibitions such as MIB, New Designers and Clerkenwell Design. Portfolio website has been taken live.

Meeting with other Brunel students and conducting makeshift major project topic

ideation workshops.


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PERS

ONALDEVELOPMEN

TPROGRESSION/TIM

EGRAPH

X

X

1A

1E

X

1D

X

XX

X1E

1A

1B

1C

1D

1E

1F

1G

1H

1I

1J

1K

1L

1M

1N

1O

1P

2A

2B

2C

2D

2E

3A

3B

3C

020406080100

PERSONA

LDEVELOPMENTGOALS

PROGRESSTOWARDSGOALS(%)

Star

tofwork-

PDP1

PDP1

-PD

P2

PDP2

-PD

P3

PDP3

-PD

P4

Goal

Rem

oved

XX

XGoal

Merge

dWith


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Thank you

New Round Three AR111 LED

tting.

Example instruction sheet creat-

ed for heat resistant Square One

Ceiling tting.4

Screenshot of personal websites

welcome screen.3

Overall Notes On Placement

I feel that my placement at Aktiva has been extremely useful in my personal development over this

year. With the company being of quite a small size I was able to see and work on the whole R&D

life cycle of products from rst conception to ongoing maintenance and updates to nally being

replaced by a different tting in a scope that I doubt I would of been able to had this been a larger

company.

This year I have had the opportunity to introduce a new product from scratch of my creation(B Square LED) as well working on updates to products such as Square One Ceiling, Round Three LED

and Showbeam 3, whilst learning and honing my skills in Photometrics and Dialux, Solidworks and

Thermal Analysis as well as AutoCad and Illustrator. However this year all analogue sketching has just

been 2D with the purpose of tting mechanisms together rather than illustrative purposes.

1A Better time management.

1B Improve sketching (esp organic forms).

1C Learn how to manage workow.

1D Keep up newly formed healthy routine.

1E Form brand and self promote.1F Finish side projects and start new ones.

1G Get work featured in design blog.

1H Improve my illustrator skill.

1I Be ready for bespoke project

1J Learn engineering drawings

1K Cultivate new contacts for the future

1L Improve solidworks assembly skill

1M Use contacts for lamp project

1N Get in shape

1O Make changes to improve existing products

1P Understand the nuances of consultancies

2A Work on rendering/Keyshot materials2B Start doing some graphic design

2C Presentation practice

2D Learn more about thermodynamics

2E Design/print business cards

3A Update Portfolio

3B Make folders of work

3C Improve my handwriting

Goals Key

From the graph I can clearly see that in a number of cases what I rst imagined to be short or medium term goals turned out to be

a lot longer (1A, 2C) as the work involved was massively underestimated. Also it is clear that some goals that I originally viewed as

their own should and were eventually consumed into much bigger, more complex goals such as 1G (work featured in design blog)

and 2E (print business cards) becoming facets of the larger goal 1E (form brand and self promote).

Documents

Luke Firth PDP 4