Photo frame guessing game
I designed and built a custom photo-frame guessing game as a personal gift. The idea was to take the familiar logic of a face-guessing game and turn it into something more personal, using real photos of family, friends, and pets instead of generic characters.
The finished piece was built from layered 1/8 inch plywood and laser cut so it could function both as a playable game and as a framed display object when it was not being used. That dual purpose shaped the design. It needed to feel like a finished object worth leaving out, not just a novelty game that would disappear into a closet.
The physical design took more iteration than it first appeared. The flipping photo tiles needed to move smoothly, sit cleanly in the frame, and be easy enough to use without feeling fragile. The plywood layers had to align properly, the tile spacing had to work with the photos, and the matching card set needed somewhere to live so the game stayed self-contained.
I designed integrated storage for the photo cards so the object could hold all of its own pieces. That small detail made the project feel more complete: the game, photo frame, and storage all belonged to the same object rather than becoming separate parts that could be misplaced.
Preparing the photos became its own workflow problem. The source images were inconsistent: different crops, orientations, face sizes, lighting, and backgrounds. To make the game work visually, the faces needed to be prepared in a consistent format and arranged efficiently for printing.
To solve that, I built a small browser-based crop tool. The tool let me crop the source photos into consistent portrait squares and arrange them onto printable 4 by 6 layouts. That made it easier to prepare both the flipping tile images and the matching card set without manually rebuilding every layout by hand.
The project is personal and playful, but it reflects the same kind of thinking I use in more technical work. A simple idea became a product-design problem, a fabrication problem, and a workflow problem at the same time. The final result connected a physical object with a small digital tool so the whole process could be made more consistent, repeatable, and polished.
Parametric espresso tools
After switching to a bottomless portafilter, I ran into two small but persistent workflow problems that did not have good off-the-shelf answers for my setup.
The first problem was cleanup. The spent espresso puck would not always come out cleanly, even with a knock box. I designed a flexible TPU ejector that seals against the bottom of the portafilter basket. A quick smack creates enough air pressure to push the grounds out cleanly into the compost.
The second problem was fit. I wanted a tamping station that actually matched my portafilter, but many printable holders online describe compatibility by brand or general size without exposing the dimensions that matter. In practice, the fit depends on details like basket diameter, ear geometry, handle angle, saddle height, and counter clearance.
To make the design more adaptable, I created a parametric OpenSCAD tamper station. Instead of remodelling the holder for every variation, the key dimensions can be measured, entered, and regenerated for a specific portafilter setup.
This is a small project, but it captures a useful design pattern: solve the immediate problem, identify which dimensions actually control fit and function, and turn the solution into something adjustable enough to be reused instead of rebuilt from scratch.