Digital Making – Spring 2019

Welcome to the homepage for our course this semester. This course brings together students from design, engineering, and business among other majors, to learn how to make things, and then share it with the world. Weekly updates on what we do in class are available, and students reflect on their learning and share on the blog. Earlier versions of the course are available for 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015

This course is now part of a series and will focus on Accessible Product Design, sponsored by the Siebel Center for Design. Selected students from Dr. McDonah’s Disability and relevant design, have been recruited for this course. She focused on training students on empathetic design, opportunity identification and concept refinement. This course focuses on prototyping, while building skills in in design thinking. We are inspired by the human centered design approach, and take inspiration from http://www.designkit.org/ , and bringing in a flipped model by having the students participate in an online course to supplement the in-class work.

Our key partner is this project is Adam Bleakney, the coach of the University of Illinois Men’s and Women’s Wheelchair Track team, who is helping frame the students discovery towards opportunities in the life experiences of differently abled and many extreme athletes, rather than their challenges. He is coordinating a group of mentors who are inspiring and mentoring our students this semester.

Visit to the wheel chair team’s training facility and shop.
On air with the @Rollin Illini

We are also fortunate to be funded by the Gies College of Business, to bring in a social innovation firm, https://milestone-labs.com , to help mentor and guide the teams as they identify opportunities to create impact.

Finally, our fuzzy friends from Illinois Service Dogs are also helping motivate our students.

Follow along with our student’s learning journey on the blog.