On the 30th of September, our school took a group of Design Technology students to London to visit the Design Museum.
The hope was that we would gain inspiration and ideas for our ongoing GCSE coursework project, and we were certainly not disappointed!
The museum was huge, spanning over four floors, each filled with products and inventions from both the past and the present.
There was so much variety, from technology to roadsigns, to chairs, to the world's first paper phone (you did read that right!).
Paper Phone was an experimental app which prints out a personalized booklet containing all the information you need for the day, such as contacts, calendar, maps etc, and replacing your phone to give you a much needed digital detox.
The ground floor of the museum is an exhibition room, and at the time, was displaying the history of Barbie.
Unfortunately, we didn't get the opportunity to look around, however this was made up for with a trip to the gift shop!
You could buy almost anything in the shop; it was full of weird and whacky solutions to problems you didn't know you had.
Whilst it was certainly on the expensive side of things, this is often expected of museums/galleries in London, and entry to the building is totally free, so I really cannot complain!
As a group, we were very well taken care of by the staff at the museum, and even got to take part in an hour-long workshop before we were left to wander around the building.
We were lead through an interactive session about chairs, and what makes a chair good or bad. We then got the chance to work in groups to design, prototype and present our ideas for a new chair, fit for a specific purpose, such as taking to a festival, or using in a classroom.
The people running the session were really brilliant; they really listened to our ideas and gave us great advice on what to improve on.
The session also gave us a good chance to practice our prototyping, drawing, modelling and presenting skills, which are super important in Design Technology, and being able to work on this outside the classroom is great.
On the whole, this trip was a really great way to gain insight and knowledge into the world of design, we got the chance to see so many amazing products and ideas, I could've spent days reading about each individual piece.
I would highly recommend this museum if you need something a bit different to do in London!
