This week was officially the start of DATE@ZJU! It was a great start filled with many new experiences here, both in ZJU and in Hangzhou. Here’s a summary of the key events and activities that happened over this past week:
DATE Opening Day
On the opening day, we had a sharing by the staff-in-charge of various programs – academic and industry visits. It was pretty interesting because we were briefed on the courses available for us to take here in ZJU and the plethora of industry visits to large enterprises up for us to sign up, which includes Geely’s Taizhou Volvo Factory, Zhejiang GEELY Holding Group Co. LTD., and even Yamaha Company!
First Industry Visit
The visit to Hangzhou Shining 3d Tech Co. Ltd. this week was an eye-opening experience as I learnt about the use of 3D printing in a myriad of industries such as automobile, aerospace and even in cell printing!
First Assignment for Theme Project
My official theme project kick-started with us having to conduct market research of the current courtyard lighting products in the market. We were also introduced to the process of developing a prototype which involves first conducting a thorough background research on what’s in the market, users, scenarios, before moving on to conceptualizing our idea, creating a minimal viable product, making more improvements to it and finally creating a workable and presentable prototype.
First Lesson in ZJU
This week was also the official start of our course – Design Thinking and Expression: Origami Robots. We learnt about the different concepts – character, body language, perception, feedback and interaction, and how they all come together to make up an origami robot. After a 2.5 hours lecture in Chinese (which proved to be quite a challenge given that we have all our lectures and tutorials in English back in Singapore haha), we had a hands-on activity which allowed us to create our own origami robots with origami templates provided to us. It was interesting to put together the origami and program the servo motor that was the key to the vitality of our paper robots.
First official visit to 湖墅学校
Additionally, this week was the start of the TFi team’s community involvement program (CIP) to 湖墅学校. We conducted our first 2 activities with the children – baking and origami. As part of the baking team, we baked cupcakes and made buttercream icing from scratch with them. It was fun spending time with them and we found out that some of them were really passionate about baking!
First Hike with friends!
My friends and I decided to go on a short hiking trip during the weekend to enjoy the nature here in Hangzhou. We decided to explore the 宝石山 hiking route and the view after an infinite number of steps we ascended was worth every bit of my energy. This hike around Xihu showcased how beautiful and culturally-rich Hangzhou is.
Overall, it was truly an enriching week with many first experiences here and I’m looking forward to learn more over the next few weeks! 🙂
