Time Capsule Part I & II

11 min readMar 29, 2021

Background

This post will cover 2 out of 3 parts of this project, where I will be working on a time capsule project. For the first part of the assignment, the objective is about telling stories about objects I own and that have personal meaning for me. For this project, I decided to choose 3 things.

For the second part of this assignment, after I have finished my thoughts about the contents of my time capsule. The next step was to build the actual time capsule and envision how it would look like.

Part I of III

Tools

The tools I used for this project are:

Mural

My 3 products (First boxing gloves, backpack, some of my finance books)

Self-Reflection

I wanted to start doing some self-reflection on each of the products I have listed above and document them. I utilized Mural to do this, and for each product, I wanted to answer the following questions.

What motivated me to get this?
Why is this product valuable to me?
How did you get it?

Feel free to take a look at the Mural Board: Click Here!

Setting things up

Now that I could organize my self-reflection, I wanted to try to put them all together and see if I can create a narrative based on them. The first thing I wanted to do is to create a protagonist for my narrative. I wanted to create a backstory for this protagonist by referencing all my self-reflection motivations and values. So I have started putting them all together in different themes.

Now that I was able to organize them, I created a backstory for our protagonist. For this narrative, I have decided to name my protagonist Daniel.

Introducing Daniel

Backstory: Daniel grew up in New York City in a challenging environment. He was not the brightest kid when it came to academics; he would always ditch class and get bullied by other students. His teachers would always lecture him that he won’t amount to anything unless he focuses on his academics and gets his priorities in order. His home life was not much better; his parents would get scammed occasionally, lose a lot of money, and causing conflict within his family. However, going through all this, he still has the ambition to become the very best and surpass his peers and family members.

Setting Daniel’s story

Now that we got our protagonist Daniel, the self-reflection notes from the Mural board, and the 3 products. The last thing is to start organizing the products based on a chronological order when Daniel would have encountered each product in his life and provide a brief description of each of the products.

Now that I was able to organize everything, it was time to start my narrative.

Final Narrative

Summer break has just ended, and it was time for Daniel to get a new backpack for school since the last one he had got ripped apart by a bully from his school, Richard. In the past, Richard would always rip apart Daniel’s backpack in front of everyone. However, this time, Daniel bought a durable backpack that his best friend suggested, the Steep Tech backpack. This backpack was so durable that even Richard was unable to damage it. Daniel was glad to choose this backpack cause now he didn’t have to worry about coming back home with a damaged bag and getting his parents concerned. He could take this backpack wherever he has gone, whether it was school, the parks, and other trips with his friends.

Even though Daniel felt more secured having his durable backpack, he was still getting bullied. Richard has constantly bullied Daniel for the past three years. At one point, Daniel reached his breaking point and realized that he could not handle this anymore. Going to a lousy school and being raised in a challenging environment made him know that it is time for a change. So he decided to pursue boxing, where he can learn to stand up for himself. He purchased his first set of boxing gloves from Everlast. Boxing was something he enjoyed. In a short span of three weeks, he started gaining confidence and decided to confront Richard. Once Richard came to Daniel to try to take his money, Daniel chose to fight back. As a result, Daniel was able to beat Richard in front of all the students in the hallway. Thus, Richard would leave Daniel alone from now on, and other students in the school stopped calling him names.

Now that David could build up his physical attribute, he was ambitious to increase his intelligence. David and his family are well known in his community to be one of the not-so-bright groups. David has always been falling behind academically, and his family has been scammed multiple times. David refuses to accept that he is just another kid failing in his academics just because he is not gifted enough. David has an ambitious goal to become wealthier than his peers. To understand how to become more prosperous, he realizes that he needs to understand the first thing is money. He took the initiative to go to book stores to start buying books related to the market. He found the Dhando investor, the intelligent investor, getting started in stocks, invested, the common sense of investing, that beats the market. He buys all these books and starts hustling to improve his school grades and read all these books. After reading all the books in 2 months, he felt more confident and knowledgeable about how money works in economics and how it can work for him. By having this hustling mindset, David’s grades started to improve and have a better life perspective. With all the things he was able to do and learn, he wanted to give back to the community he was very involved with. David realizes that just like his parents, many people get scammed within their communities. David has decided to make it a mission to help others who get bullied as he has.

Part II of III

Now that I was able to finish the first part of the assignment, where I showed the contents of what I plan to put in my time capsule and tell a story about it. It was time actually to start building the prototype of the time capsule itself.

Tools Used

Gorilla Glue

Duct Tape

Box Cutter

Boxes (From BJs)

Prototyping Plan

For the first prototype, I wanted to create a much smaller version of my time capsule to store my three products’ contents. After I created this reference, I want to utilize it to make a more significant prototype. Being able to leverage the smaller prototype helped me be more precise when it came to my three products’ volume and being less wasteful when creating the final prototype since I had to iterate less and use fewer materials.

Quick and dirty research/Sketching

To start, I decided to look around and understand how a time capsule would usually be shaped.

So I saw that it follows a very cylindrical shape. So I started working on sketching the volume of the cylinder would be. So the first thing I have done was take the biggest object I plan on putting in the time capsule. Based on the object, I traced a circle over it and made some extra spacing to ensure that the biggest object I plan to put inside the capsule would fit.

Next, I would cut out the volume piece of the cylinder. (Not the best cutout)

Now that I could get a central point of reference in terms of the cylinder’s volume, the next step was to start creating the first small iteration of my prototype.

First iteration

I could rip out a small piece of cardboard and shape it to fold it much more manageable.

Afterward, I was able to fold it and leverage the cutout I’ve done before to create a quick prototype on how it can hold my three products.

Now that I felt more confident about the volume inside the cylinder based on the prototype’s first iteration, I started working on the final version of the prototype.

Second Iteration

I got much bigger cardboard so that I can have a larger length and width actually to be able to store all of my three products.

The first thing I’ve done is cut trim out the cardboard’s edges and set it up to be more rollable into a cylindrical shape.

Based on the prototype from the first iteration, I was able to leverage that as a reference point on exactly how big the cylinder’s volume should be.

This was helpful because it helped me successfully create the right dimension on the first try since I could leverage the dimensions on the first iteration of the prototype.

Next up, I had to secure the cylinder’s endpoints to ensure that the cylinder is entirely secure and won’t break apart. So I had to use gorilla glue and duct tape on each end.

Before fully securing the holes from each endpoint, I wanted to create a handle to open/close the time capsule. At the center of the time capsule, I started tracing and cutting out where the capsule can be opened/closed.

Next, I cut out the remaining pieces earlier. I created a handle and embedded it into the centerpiece I could cut out.

Now for the finishing touch, I wanted to seal up the endpoints of the cylinder.

Final Product

After going through iterations, I present to you the TIME CAPSULE!

Self-Reflection

This project was interesting because of the different components I had to understand, such as creating a story, reflecting on three objects, and building housing for the objects. Reflecting on a deeper understanding of the objects and creating a story, brings out the sentimental value it meant for me personally.

One interesting/funny comment I have received from a friend of mine is that my final product looks like the TIE Fighter ship from Star Wars. This made me think if I created this design subconsciously as I am a big fan of all the star wars + cartoons.

What would I have done differently?

A few things I would have loved to do differently if I had the knowledge, supplies, and time are:

Being able to leverage 3D modeling tools to create the initial prototype.
Leveraging a 3D printer to create a more defined prototype.
Create an actual time capsule using very durable materials such as titanium to ensure that this time capsule can last 100 years at least.

Next Steps

Three next steps I want to set for myself personally are.

Finish up the last part of this project (Part III of III)
Start exposing myself to have more experience with physical prototyping. I feel like having skills like this can apply when creating IoT devices.
Start reflecting on some of the other products I have