• Link to XYMARA Newsletter August 2008

Why Settle For Something When You Can Make It Shine? – an interview with hooping fan extraordinaire and design-award Winner Danielle McIntosh

By Ziggy Nixon

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Danielle McIntosh’s “Hoopla Rack” – a bike rack to carry hoops for the activity know as “hooping” or “hoop dance” – has not only racked up a brace of prizes, including a cash prize at the College of Engineering’s Innovation Days this past spring, 3rd place in the Schoofs Prize for Creativity competition, 3rd place in the Tong Prototype Prize competition and, finally, the Younkle Best Presentation Award, but she has also been inundated with requests for bringing the rack to the general public.

“Hooping” or “hoop dance” lends itself to a kind of “grey zone” definition. Call it a fad or a link to an America long since lost or, if you want, the newest, trendy exercise craze that’s, quote, “sweeping the nation.” But one thing can not be disputed: for Danielle McIntosh, hooping is definitely a passion.

Hi Danielle, thanks for taking the time for us. Why do you think we humans have enjoyed some form of hooping for so very long?

Well Ziggy, I think that what it comes down to is that humans enjoy endless possibilities through creative expression. Once you start handling a hoop, you soon realize there are so many things to do with it and that it can become a metaphor for so much of life (as much of life is circular).

Danielle, you graduated a few months ago from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in Biological System Engineering with a Natural Resources and Environmental Engineering option; can you explain a bit about the focus of your studies and how you got interested in these fields?

I became interested in engineering because I really enjoyed the challenges that my math and science classes offered in high school. They were definitely my hardest classes, but I really enjoyed the process of logic and reason behind the calculations.

After spending a summer in Alaska, I realized that there is a lot of value in our natural resources, so I was extremely excited when I found the BSE department at UW-Madison. It has allowed me to enter a field that works to find actual (and creative) solutions to problems like storm water management and soil erosion.

Explain a little bit more if you would please about how you came to enter the College of Engineering’s “Innovation Days”. How did this design contest fit into what you were studying?

I actually found the “Innovation Days” competition as a requirement of my senior design class (we had to enter one design competition). I really liked the inventive spirit of the competition, which looks not only at designs that solve a problem, but also ones which are marketable and potentially patentable.

You did quite well with your “Hoopla Rack”. Can you give us some insight into the design process for creating it?

Sure. I worked on this project in the fall of 2007. It was an amazing experience even if it took up more than 20 hours of my time per week for quite a stretch!

The idea for the hula-hoop rack itself came from my experiences trying to transport my hoops. Keep in mind, self-made hoops are an average size of 42 inches in diameter, which is significantly larger than the more child-sized Hula Hoops from Wham-O. Also, depending on design, the hoops can often be weighted with sand or water to increase the difficulty when hooping with them (a typical “un-weighted” hoop usually weighs between 1.5 and 2 pounds). I mean, sure I could transport them with little problem in my car, but my real target was to create an environmentally friendly, carbon-neutral way to get them around.

That being said, the entire project was quite the adventure! I had never designed anything in my life up until this point (except websites), so I learned plenty! The initial part of the process involved a lot of research – checking out what currently existed, looking at patents and similar designs for ideas. After this, I bounced several ideas off my professors, especially my advisor, David Bohnhoff, as well as lots of my friends, bike mechanics, and other hooping enthusiasts.

After determining a set of specifications, I set to work on actually designing the rack and how it would fit on my bicycle. After many hours of manufacture, I learned how my design measured up to my hopes and how I could improve in the future. [ZN: if you want to read Danielle’s original written submission for the contest, see here, great stuff!]

What did you learn that was “new” for you outside of your studies up to that point, particularly how did this fit into your design class for biological systems engineering?

The whole design approach was an entirely new process to me. Up until this point, most of my classes had been very theoretical (and mostly natural resource-related). I was exploring an area of my studies that I hadn’t spent much focus on (for example, the other people who were in the area of my major worked on a detention pond to hold storm water).

I think that the most valuable thing that I learned is that the design process must be fuelled by a strong desire to see the project through to the end. It must be something you are passionate about – and then the rest will follow.

What lessons did you take away from the field of “design” or the processes of designing in general?

I learned that designing something and designing something for manufacture are two very different things. Also, I took home the goals of optimizing my designs instead of simply making something that functions. Why settle for something when you can make it shine?

My professor was, of course, very keen on all of us getting hands-on construction experience; the reason being that he knew we’d just become much better designers. He realized very well that if we (the engineering students) better understood how something goes together and how it’s made, then we’d really be able to reduce costs and make things more efficient, which is of course so important to any engineer in any field.

Tell us a little bit more about your web-site.

Hoop Elation is a transformation of Hula Hoopla, the first incarnation of my site. The web-site exists for one reason: to bring the joy of hooping to as many people as possible.

I really want people to feel at home when they visit, since the enthusiasm surrounding Hula Hoopla has brought me here. Again, be it through the web-site or my teaching, I want to share the feeling that anyone can find fitness, fun, and even a little bit of inner peace through hooping. And, who knows, maybe you’ll get the same rush that I do, namely that hooping is simply irresistible. In my eyes there has truly never been such an activity that brings together movement, expression, and meditation in such an inspirational way.

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