Author: Nathan Gaertner

I am a Senior majoring in Finance with a minor in the Hoeft Technology & Management Program.
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MOVIng Forward

Iterate, Iterate, Iterate

Our speaker this week was a designer from the agricultural technology start-up, EarthSense, based in Illinois’ Research Park. EarthSense has developed an autonomous, compact robot that assists farmers in collecting data from their crops on the ground level. Through their talk, we got a first-hand look into how 3D designing and printing is used by companies in the real world. EarthSense started by designing a proof-of-concept device and then tested it with a few early adopters. From user interviews and watching farmers interact with the device, they were able to pinpoint what features to improve on in their next iteration. The big thing I took away from their talk is how many iterations the designers go through in order to come up with the final product. Our speaker showed us a picture of what looked like almost a hundred discarded 3D prints of versions of a camera casing used on the robot. This part was complex because it had to only work in one specific direction so that users could not accidentally install the part upside down. Moving forward on our own project, I realize how important it will be to make many iterations of our design in order to ensure we have the best possible final copy.

Starting to Print

After the presentation from EarthSense, we got together with our teams to come up with a team name and designed a 3D printed logo. Our team decided to call ourselves MOVI to symbolize the enhanced movement we hope to give Jenna through the design of a less-bulky protective cover for her microprocessing knee. For our logo, we wanted a design that conveyed movement, but also seemed sturdy and protective. We decided to use shrinking letter sizes to give the appearance of movement and surrounded them with a triangle so that they looked protected,

Our team logo being 3D printed
The finished product

Working with Jenna

Later in the week, we got a chance to sit down with our mentor Jenna and discuss our ideas with her. Since I missed the first class session, this was my first time meeting Jenna in person and seeing her prosthetic limb. We started by getting a better understanding of our design problem. Jenna currently has a prosthetic leg cover (pictured below) that she uses to protect her microprocessing knee. The cover is sturdy, but it is too bulky on the back side of her leg and is heavy. This limits her range of motion with her leg. Our idea was to design a lighter weight protective pad that Jenna could wear to protect her leg, while still maintainig her range of motion. When we pitched this idea to Jenna she seemed very excited and we started to brainstorm potential ways to approach our design. All in all, it was a great meeting and I am excited for our team to begin workshopping solutions.

Jenna’s current prosthetic leg cover
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Digging Deeper Into Our Ideas – Week 3 Reflection

Learning From the Experts

Class went on as scheduled this week, even in the midst of the polar vortex sweeping across the Midwest. The class started with learning the logistics of the video chat software we were using, and after that, we moved into a presentation by representatives from Milestone Studios. One of the main points I took away from their presentation was how important it was to design a product that would actually be useful for the user. They told a story of a product they had worked on in the past for a user who was blind. In their initial brainstorm stage, they designed a prototype headgear motion sensor that would help their partner move around her apartment. However, when they talked with her they found that she had little trouble moving around her apartment, but what she really struggled with was not knocking her yogurt over when eating it. They were able to develop a simple yogurt stabilizing base that helped solve her problem and improved her quality of life. This tangible example helped underscore the importance of Human-Centered Design and interviews in the design process.

Assessing Our Ideas

After the presentation from Milestone Studios, each team presented on a few of their potential ideas and the mentors they wanted to work with. I had come in with the assumption that many of the teams would have noticed the same problems as our team and brainstormed similar solutions. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of the needs seen and the potential ideas given to address them. After sharing our thoughts, we broke back up into teams to think more critically about our ideas using the Challenge Definition. I really appreciated this exercise because it forced us to define our opportunity and our solution. Working with Jenna and the members of Milestone Studios we were able to define our opportunity statement as “We want to protect Jenna’s leg, while still maintaining or even improving her full range of motions.” This statement challenges us not just to protect Jenna’s knee, but also make sure we are not providing her a solution that limits her in some other way. Doing this will ensure that Jenna will actually use our solution instead of forgoing it because of any other negative effects it might have. Overall, this class was very informative and it was great working with the representatives from Milestone Studies!

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Week 2 Recap – Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation

Disclaimer: I was in Arizona this week for a school-sponsored trip for my minor and couldn’t make it to class. Instead of talking about my experience at DRES I’ll be talking about my previous experience with human-centered design and my thoughts on the videos and readings we’ve looked at so far.

Background

Coming into this class, I really didn’t know what to expect. I had some exposure to inspiration and ideation phases of the human-centered design process in another class but was interested to learn more about the implementation phase and to see how all these principles applied in a physical maker space. As I was going through the material on the methods for the inspiration phase, I was struck by how thorough the techniques were for digging deep to the root cause of any problem. Using the “Five Whys” seems like a great way to fully analyze the situation. I realized that this step was foundational in solving the true problem instead of a byproduct of the problem. Realizing this helped give me greater context for a similar class project I had worked on a year ago.

Learning from the Past

In a previous class, I worked on a team that was tasked with finding a solution that would improve the porta-potty user’s experience. We learned about the human-centered design process and then started by finding out more about the user experience. Instead of actually interviewing or going to use a porta-potty my team sent out a survey asking about the pain points in the porta-potty user experience. This lack of personal contact with our respondents inhibited us from using the “Five Whys” method to dig to the root of the problem. We ended up finding that smell was an issue and decided that a spring-loaded flap to seal off the opening would be a good solution. The final class assignment was to create a prototype of our product (shown below).

Prototype Front View
Prototype Side View

Takeaways

While it was great to go through the inspiration and ideation phases of the human-centered design, we did not go through multiple iterations of our product and were not forced to think about the viability of implementation. This led our group to create a solution that would have struggled as a workable solution outside of the classroom. In this class, I am excited to learn from my mistakes in my last group project. This semester, I plan to take a more critical approach to gather information from our user group, iterate multiple times on our product through quick 3D prototyping, and develop a product that has viable implementation prospects.