Author: Samantha McClary

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Samantha McClary Portfolio

Course Experience

Overall, I did not know what to expect from this course. Speaking to students who had taken it before, it did not have the same accessibility design focus as it did this semester. I was excited to learn how to design and 3D print, and I didn’t know what else the semester would bring! While I thought some of the coursework and assignments distracted from our main opportunity and goal to create a product that Jenna could use during yoga to increase balance, overall I learned a lot. I was very happy at the end when presented Jenna with a prototype that she was genuinely very excited about. I hope if nothing else that Jenna uses our prototype when she does yoga to get better at her practice!

What I Learned

This course brought a lot of different topics together and I learned a lot of both technical and soft skills throughout the weeks.

In Week 2, I was introduced to the mentors for the first time. I learned how to interview, how to prompt others to tell their stories, and how to listen to hear the opportunities in various situations. We also discussed designing with empathy in mind, which comes very naturally when you are able to listen closely and truly hear the opportunities!

In Week 3, things were a bit unorthodox when Champaign was hit with incredibly low temperatures. However, we were still able to hear from Milestone Studio Labs about how they approach designing. I think one big takeaway from this presentation was that sometimes the simplest designs still make a huge impact. This definitely came into play during our design process, as we started overcomplicating rather than creating a helpful solution.

In Week 4, we learned the basics of Fusion 360 design and how to print on the 3D printers. This was the first time I had ever printed anything and it was a very cool technical skill to learn. I think additive creation methods are really awesome to bring your ideas to life quickly. Later in Week 6 we had a more advanced presentation on Fusion 360 from an AutoDesk representative. This was great as we thought 3D printing would be best to allow others outside this class to recreate our design for themselves.

Backtracking a little, in Week 5 we honed our project focus and chose the opportunity wanted to address. Using the sticky note activity we were able to lay out exactly why this opportunity to help with yoga spoke to us and how we could help. When we met with her to discuss working on this opportunity, she was really excited about our choice which confirmed our direction.

Weeks 7, 8, and 9 were spent in the FabLab learning about the tools available to us while creating a motion-sensing watch. This was a great experience because we were able to make a fun product while learning a variety of different tools. We learned how to use the lasers to raster and vector our watch faces. We learned how to use basic programming to program an arduino with tilt sensors. Lastly, we learned how to sew and how all of these different techniques can be used to create a plethora of different products and prototypes.

During these 3 weeks, we also continued work on our opportunity with Jenna. We were able to interview a yoga instructor and the founder of Yoga for Amputees, attend a yoga class, and create low-fidelity prototypes to have critiqued by Milestone Labs.

Weeks 10 and 11 were spend preparing for the Make-a-thon. We met the other two classes who would be participating in the Make-a-thon with us alongside their faculty sponsors. We also continued sketching and ideating using feedback from Jenna along the way to make sure we were creating an effective design. We received help from Fusion experts in starting our 3D CAD file. I learned how to design files so that dimensions can be editable later which was very helpful for our final Instructable.

Finally, the Make-a-thon took place. Unfortunately I was not able to participate but I definitely learned through the experience of my teammates and our preparation. During a Make-a-thon, time is essential. Since 3D printing takes so long, the team used a different approach that would be applicable to more users. Although our final design did not use this approach, it was good to explore multiple avenues and they came out with an awesome prototype shown in Week 13.

Lastly, we created our final prototype! I could not be more proud of everything I learned in Fusion360 that helped me create this design and have the know-how to explain it to others as well. Jenna was really happy with our final prototype and I hope she is able to take it to a yoga class soon to really put it to the test!

  • First 3D print during Week 4
  • Understanding our project vision in Week 5
  • Learning more details of Fusion360 in Week 6
  • Going to the FabLab with class for the first time in Week 7
  • Creating low-fidelity prototypes in Week 8
  • Finishing our arduinos and watches in Week 9
  • Iterating designs in Weeks 10-12
  • Iterating designs in Weeks 10-12
  • Iterating designs in Weeks 10-12
  • Creating a prototype during the Make-a-thon with a new approach
  • Having Jenna test our final prototype!
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Rapid Prototyping Make-a-Thon!

This past weekend, the teams in our class competed in a make-a-thon that joined 3 courses together and many mentors to make designs focused on accessibility. Unfortunately, I had to be out of town this past weekend, so I did not experience the exciting hustle and bustle in person! However, from Professor Sachdev’s many groupme updates and communicating with my own group throughout the weekend, I was able to find some key takeaways and help our team continue to push forward. I was also able to contribute to our prototype creation before the official start of the Makeathon on Friday evening, as 3D printing can take a lot of time we wanted to start early!

Going into the weekend, I had printed a scaled prototype of a Fusion File that our team had created in class that week. This scaled prototype represents a design that would be a replacement for Jenna’s current prosthetic that she could use for doing yoga specifically. This prototype includes a stable lateral joint but a hinge joint in the frontal plane. We did this because Jenna has told us that her difficulty revolves around the lateral balance, as she has no way to control that without the ability to use her ankle to adjust. It also has a tall rod which would be inserted as her current prosthetic is and a circular base which would increase the surface area and give her even balance in all directions.

  • Fusion File
  • Separated Pieces
  • Assembled Pieces

During the Make-a-Thon, our team took another approach. We were introduced to the elderly population during the pre-Makeathon event as a potential user for our product, but understood that a replacement prosthetic would only be applicable to prosthetic users. However, an additive product that would attached to a foot, shoe, or prosthetic base would be able to be used by a wider audience. Our team took this approach throughout the weekend and landed with this very cool design – they did an awesome job!

  • Base of Additive Design
  • Back View Additive Design
  • Aerial View Additive Design

Today, my teammate and I were able to meet up with Jenna as she is back from Boston now! We had her try the additive design prototype and got a lot of great feedback. Overall, it is difficult for an additive design to add the stability that Jenna requires in the lateral motion. She did see our fusion file and scaled model of our replacement design as well, and she was very excited about that concept. She thinks it has a very high probability of working. Overall, she had some feedback on that design as well. She said that the hinge for front-back lateral movement would be unnecessary and potentially more unstable, so she would prefer a set 90* angle of base to rod. She also suggested some amount of webbing between the base and the rod to add stability and durability to the design. We are going to make some changes to our Fusion design this week and send them to her to get her feedback and then hopefully print a full scale version by Friday for her to try on!

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Week 11: Preparation!

This week marked only a week and a half away from the Makeathon! In class we heard from the Social Innovation Center at the university discussing the opportunities we have to pursue our projects after the course is over. The Social Innovation Center helps run the iVenture Accelerator – a 10 week summer accelerator that helps student start-ups get the mentorship and funding they need to make their vision a reality. The program is full-time during the summer, but then continues throughout the entire school year with bi-weekly meetings for guidance and furthering your vision. Unfortunately, I am a senior so I will not be able to be a main player furthering a project since I will have to start work. However, the opportunities presented in class to us were really incredible and showed the immense support that the University has for students who want to pursue their own ideas.

After this presentation, we had the opportunity to speak with Milestone Labs. They seemed pleased with our work so far but we were not able to show them the sketches and prototypes that we had made that they had seen an earlier week due to technical difficulties so they did not give us particularly detailed feedback. Overall, they suggested that we move forward in creating our design in a CAD software and print smaller scaled versions to understand how the pieces would play together and iterate more. I included the original prototypes we created below for reference.

Since we created those prototypes, we have made some edits to our design based on feedback from Jenna, Marsha, and others. Two of my teammates were able to meet with William this Friday to discuss our design in further detail. Coming out of that meeting, they had created a more in-depth sketch with some of the tweaks we had been discussing over the past few weeks, along with some suggestions from Michael.

  • This is the type of texture and movement that is sketched in the “foot” of our sketch.
  • This sketch shows a few changes, namely a hinge for the ankle to allow movement, a textured and flexible foot to be more realistic in its movement, and a few different foot shapes as visible to the right. From our discussions with Jenna, a circular base may be the best route.

William also suggested using a flexible material in some parts of the design. He mentioned “printing on top” of one design to do this. Our team was unfamiliar with this concept so I did a bit of digging to understand how this would be possible and what that entailed. This video was very helpful in understanding how printers with multiple extruders, but also mentions how to make things using multiple materials with a normal 3D printer. Each piece would just have to be printed separately if we did not have access to a multi-extruder printer from my understanding.

Our next steps will be to create our design in a computer-aided design software. Unfortunately, this technical skill is not any of our expertise, so we are having trouble getting this actually created. Hopefully this week in class we will be able to sit down with someone who has more know-how on this topic to help us create the file so that we can print a scaled design and understand what works and what needs to be changed!

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Week 10: Meeting our Fellow Makeathon-ers!

Our meeting on Tuesday was definitely different than most of our classes. We were able to meet all of the other participants of April’s makeathon. I was very appreciative of this event because I will not be in town during the makeathon meeting. Although we were not able to bring others into our teams, we were able to hear all of the professors speak about their experience in this makeathon and hear from more mentors.

First, we heard from Professor Sachdev explaining the format of the Makeathon and how this “prototype” has come to be. We also heard from Dr. McDonough. I had not been able to meet her previously and I really appreciated her candor. She brought out a great amount of information from the mentors and she was un-apologetically curious.

We met new mentors as well. The most interesting thing we saw was how one individual has adapted to put on his socks. Without complete control of his fingers, he is not able to open a sock to put on as many people do. Thus, his mom has sewn 3 loop on each sock so that he can just loop his fingers through to pull rather than grip the sides of the sock. I couldn’t help but think of how useful that design would be for elders with arthritis. Gripping small things can be difficult as you age and your joints stiffen, so this design has a product for a much larger user base than just her son!

Overall, the event was very nice in understanding how the Makeathon will be organized and executed, as well as meeting the other participants. I hope there will be a time for us to collaborate with some of the other students, rather than being silo-ed in our classes. One of the key next steps our group has is to make a Fusion360 model of our design and print the prototype for Jenna to try. Jenna has been very interested in making her product from 3D printers, so understanding this medium and creating our prototype from a 3D printer would be really helpful for our team. Unfortunately, our team is 3 business majors, and we don’t quite have the technical knowledge to design everything we have drawn in Fusion360. Having another student help us with this design would be very helpful to completing our prototype during the weekend!

Moving forward, our team will be meeting early next week to create our Test Protocol and get back into the swing of things after spring break!

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Highlighting the FabLab: A Fabulous Resource

The UIUC FabLab is filled with unique resources not available anywhere else on campus. Even so, this semester is the first time many people in our course stepped foot in the building. I wanted to use my “Once a Semester Activity” to highlight this phenomenal place, the people inside who make it so accessible, the amazing projects that are done in this building on a regular basis, and how this location has been an asset to our course.

First Time FabLab Goers

The basics of the FabLab can be found on their website, but I think personal anecdotes are also useful in understanding the place itself. For me, the first time I entered the FabLab was in November 2017 when I was speaking with the staff about setting up a space for Stay Glassy. Stay Glassy is a part of the Illinois Enactus non-profit, creating products from glass waste. This was incredible of the FabLab to offer some of their space to student makers who had never known this space existed previously. Everything about the building is about enabling others to make what they want by giving them the skills and equipment to do it on their own. I felt this from the moment I entered the building, and while this was a niche reason to visit in the first place, I think that is common in what draws many people from campus. When you are looking for a specific tool, this place will catch your eye. When you are looking for a creative outlet, this place will catch your eye. When you are looking to make something, this place will catch your eye. While our BADM357 course brought many students for the first time, many students stumble upon this location on their own pursuing their own passion projects

Surveying some of the individuals in the FabLab, I found a common thread. Each had come either for a course, through an organization, or to work on an individual passion project. While each specific reason was different, there were many common feelings. A lot of students felt overwhelmed walking in for the first time. This was fueled mainly by the sheer number of resources, being in a new space for the first time, and being surrounded by people they had not met before. The inside of the building is also quite a juxtaposition to the outside, and the transition can be a lot. However, after overcoming the initial shock, understanding the layout, and learning the etiquette, all of the students I interviewed said they loved coming back. Going to a new place with tools you don’t know how to use can inherently be overwhelming, but the culture of the space is welcoming and fun. It is open to experimentation and artistic expression.

FabLab Etiquette

When you enter the FabLab for the first time, you may be overwhelmed as well. For that, I’d like to present a list of “What to do as a Newcomer” that will perhaps ease your transition to the space.

  1. Sign In – When you first arrive, you should sign-in on one of the tablets near the door. Signing in does not notify anyone but rather helps the FabLab keep track of who is coming and going from their facility. You don’t have to write in a particular reason for being there or fill all of the fields, but signing in is a courtesy.
  2. Find a Staff Member – There is an electronic board across from the main door that lists the staff on hand. While you may not see any of them immediately, it’s also very possible there are staff members around that aren’t listed on the board. The best thing to do is ask the first person you see if they can point you to a staff member. Many people in the FabLab are return visitors and can likely point you to someone if they themselves are not staff!
  3. Ask for a Tour – Wandering is great, but inefficient. The FabLab is filled with tools, and it’s likely you won’t know what they all do at first glance. Asking a staff member for a quick tour as a first-timer is a very easy ask and useful even if you are going in for one very specific task. Then if you ever need to go again, you’ll be familiar with the layout and the space’s capabilities!
  4. Test Yourself – Try a new example tutorial to test yourself on a new tool! If there’s a tool you are interested in but have no idea how to use it, check the tutorials page on the FabLab website. They have step-by-step instructions on anything from using SewArt to embroider clothing to creating silicone moulds to solar powered USB chargers. Starting here to learn a tool or technique is a great choice, and you can ask staff if you get stuck on any particular part.
  5. Pay for Materials or Tool Time – Some of the equipment and materials requires payment. Everything is very inexpensive for how incredible the resources are! Details about rates are posted around the shop by the machines they apply to while materials can be bought from a staff member. The FabLab accepts cash and card so it’s very accessible!
  6. Sign Out – Congratulations! You completed your first FabLab visit and hopefully overcame the first-time jitters while learning something new! On your next visit you can keep exploring, learning, and pointing out staffers to newcomers who see you as a senior FabLab-er.

Who’s at the FabLab?

The FabLab is filled with passionate individuals. In my visits, I have met people creating things for class, for fun, for profit, for their mom, for anything! There’s no good reason to not hang out at the FabLab! The FabLab is a community space, and they truly turn no one away. It is not just a student resource. It is open to community members and regularly hosts programming for kids in the area. One of the biggest users of the FabLab in the summer is summer campers! FabLab staff organizes many weekly camps all summer long to introduce kids to the space and teach them some really awesome skills. They also organize workshops for undergraduate student groups and you can browse the topics here.

Let’s See this Place!

  • Anycubic Photon 3D Resin Printer
  • User Guide for Lasers
  • Example Projects
  • 3D Printing Corner
  • Tools and Example Projects
  • Sewing Studio Room
  • Laser Options: Raster or Vector
  • Epilogue Laser in Action

While this far from encompasses everything the FabLab has to offer, it is the FabLab from my perspective.

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Finishing Watches & Storyboards!

This week at the FabLab, we finished our watch prototypes! It was really great to see all of the pieces we had worked on over the past few weeks come together. First, we coded our Arduino Uno boards to give certain outputs at certain positions based on the tilt sensors. Once programmed, we assembled the strap, bottom, top, face, and board all together! It was very fun to see the output on the computer and see everything working perfectly!

Code on Arduino Uno Board
All elements of the to-be completed watch.

Overall, the time at the FabLab this week was very successful. After the watch, we created quick storyboards. Our storyboard showed the closeness of the amputee community. Overall, from our discussion with Marsha, it was very clear that amputee communities are fairly close even in big cities like Chicago. At one point or another, she had met a ton of the amputee women in Chicago through yoga classes and speaking events. We wanted our storyboard to show this, so we demonstrated a woman like Jenna going to a yoga class with our design, and showing another amputee yogi where she had gotten it. Having our design as an open source design, the power of community could spread this design to anyone who needs it. They could customize the design as needed for them and go to a local FabLab or library to 3D print the file. This type of accessibility on the affordability side is exactly what we are looking to provide!

Snapshot of our storyboard.

Moving forward, our team is looking forward to finding people at our Tuesday event to help with our capabilities. Since we do not have an industrial design major or engineer on our team, our Fusion360 experience is limited. We are hoping that we can find some people to join our team who can bring our designs to life!

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Quick Prototypes for Milestone Labs

This week, we were tasked with creating quick prototypes from materials we already had to better understand what our sketches from last week would look like in 3D. Our team met in the Art & Design Building to get “crafty”, and definitely started honing in on exactly what to design, especially with feedback from Milestone Labs, Jenna, and Yoga for Amputees founder Marsha Danzig.

We created two prototypes. The first has a pylon attached to a base shaped similarly to a flipper based off the interview we had with Marissa, a yoga teacher at the arc. This would completely replace Jenna’s current foot, which she told us is easily removable with an Allen wrench.

Our first prototype – the white paper cylinder represents the pylon and attaches to the cardboard base.

Our second design was an attachment to Jenna’s current prosthetic and would include altering a yoga mat as well. This attachment is a series of magnets that would provide her stability but definitely not get in the way while she does any floor poses. Our questions with this design definitely revolved around magnets: what kinds of magnets to use? How strong would the magnets have to be to hold her well and still be easy to pick up her leg for one-legged poses on her sound side?

The white paper “foot” in the middle represents Jenna’s current prosthetic – the magnet band would be attachable.

When we brought these two designs to Milestone Labs for feedback, they definitely saw where the designs came from based on our research and were concerned about the magnets as well. They even pointed out that the rest of her leg has metal, so the magnets may be more attracted to that when not on the mat and get in the way. However, they did really like the pylon design. We also showed these to Jenna after class, and she was more comfortable with the pylon design. She mentioned that rather than a “flipper” shape, a circle, with the pylon connecting to the center, may actually give her the best balance! She’s also most interested in having something that could be 3D printed, which we could design for the pylon design but the magnet design would need more flexible fabrics incorporated.

Lastly, we had an interview with Marsha Danzig, founder of YogaforAmputees, after class. She was incredibly sweet and supportive of our project. She gave recommendations regarding the flexibility of our materials and the shape of the base as a circle made sense to her as well. She also reflected on some students in her amputee yoga classes having basic prosthetics created for yoga that resembled plungers. These are not commercially available, but they essentially created them as we are now. The “plunger” bottom was helpful because it had a light suction which increased their stability. This is definitely something we are interested in adding to our design.

Our next steps will be to create a 3D printed prototype to make sure we have the correct measurements and give time for iterations. We also want to talk to Jenna after our discussion with Marsha to get her perspective on the feedback we received.

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The FabLab Explained

This week, we had the privilege of having class in the FabLab with their employees walking us through the lab and introducing us to some of the tools. I have actually been to the FabLab many times before for a project in an RSO on campus. However, I have always stuck to the machinery I needed for that project, and had no need to branch out. Even though I have walked past this variety of equipment before, I had never used a lot of it. It has definitely put the lab in a new light for me. Emilie, Duncan, and Brandon did a great job giving a plethora of examples of projects that they have worked on or that they have helped others work on in this space.

The space itself is very welcoming and I appreciate their commitment to community programs and being open to not just students. The university is a huge resource to the surrounding community, but a lot of times it is “roped-off” to non-university residents. The FabLab is a part of a network of FabLabs that are really democratizing the maker movement and making it accessible to everyone, not just those who spend thousands on equipment.

One interesting project that I had seen some articles about was wearables. 3D printing onto mesh-like fabrics to create wearable garments is a new-er “trend” but it yields many applications especially in the medical world. Having a 3D printed brace that perfectly forms to you and goes on like fabric would transform a lot of recovery programs.

Variety of gadgets and projects at the FabLab.

The project they had us work on to introduce us to some of the tools was a motion-sense watch. Essentially, a prototype of something that could monitor someone’s arm movements, which could be applied to someone completing out-patient physical therapy. Being able to track these movements would yield more accurate data on how effective the treatment is with and without the proper physical therapy. This was a fun project to work on and we will be completing it this coming week.

At the end of class, we participated in a brainstorming activity. The teams were to sketch ideas for their opportunities given different constraints: Design for the elderly, for children, with $0, and with $1B. These constraints definitely help you think outside the box and think with more tact for different users!

Some of our group’s sketches.

Finally, Jenna visited class at the end so that we could talk to her about our sketches and what she thought would work best for her. We learned that she does not mind if it doesn’t resemble a foot at all – as long as it works! We also got some necessary measurements for our design which we will be able to use when we start modeling our prototype in Fusion360.

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Learning Fusion360 & How Might We…

This week, we had a presentation from Autodesk Fusion360 to better understand this CAD software and how we can use it throughout this semester to complete our projects. It was really great to have someone in-class be able to talk us through an entire design and learn the software hands-on. Before class, we had an assignment due to familiarize ourselves with the software. With video lectures, you can learn a lot but it is really great to have someone in person be able to troubleshoot any problems you run into and answer your questions. In class, we developed a phone holder with a cord area and a small well for keys. You can see my design here: https://a360.co/2EalDaP as well as the photo below.

Fusion360 phone holder.

I thought the most interesting part of learning Fusion360 was the instructor’s comments on its accessibility. Fusion360 is free for students, which was a very purposeful decision. He noted that some of their clients had a difficult time hiring people with the necessary 3D design skills. Thus, Autodesk made this software free so that there would be more people learning the software and then able to use it in later employment opportunities.

After learning these skills, we returned to the activity we had started last week. This time, we were grouping our ideas into three more tuned “Insight” segments with offshoots. These three groups helped us target our “How Might We” statements. “How Might We” statements help organize the team to get excited about certain ways to create our final solution. Our group focused on the subtlety of the design to not draw too much attention in class, and the functionality of the design to transition through all of the parts of a yoga class. You can see our team’s rough draft below.

How Might We statements for 3D-Bal.

Overall, it was a very productive week and I am excited to be at the FabLab next week to continue learning different tools at our disposal!

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Understanding & Ideating & Researching

This week’s class was jam-packed with new information, new perspectives, and new brainstorming techniques! To start, we had a speaker who has a lot of expertise when it comes to the applications and vast expansion opportunities for 3D Printing. In particular, he discussed the possibilities of 3D Printing in the healthcare industry. For example, surgeons are able to create 3D models of their patients’ organs to best understand how to go about the surgery with less unknowns. Being able to interact with the patients’ internal issues in a 3-dimensional space is groundbreaking and can be incredibly helpful in applications such as tumor removal.

Guest speaker videochatting the class discussing medical innovations involving 3D Printing.

Next, we had Jeff discuss the resources on campus that will help our groups bring our ideas to life. Jeff is the head of the CU FabLab by the agriculture library that I was able to visit last week for research. He even highlighted one of the master’s students that I spoke to when I visited! Overall, his space and his team have a lot of different tools and expertise to share with our teams to complete our projects. Most interestingly, Jeff touched on the new Center for Design that is being built behind the Business Instructional Facility. It will be very interesting to hear about how that new space helps tie together students from across campus and bring attention to all of the awesome resources.

Lastly, we began a brainstorming activity that revolved around storytelling. From our research last week, we discussed the different emotions and motivations that go into the opportunity our team is presenting on. In the end, we had four categories filled with various activities and emotions that all connect to our project with Jenna to make sure she can participate in all aspects of yoga.

The final result of our brainstorming exercise.

Lastly, our group was able to conduct more research toward the end of the week. On Saturday, I was able to meet with an ARC yoga instructor. She is a senior who has been teaching yoga classes since her freshman year. She had a lot of great insight overall on how our solution needs to fit with the flow of classes, and the different varieties of yoga that exist. Additionally, she noted a story of a woman with a prosthetic who she had had in a few of her classes over the years. This woman had similar balance issues to Jenna, and needed to adapt a lot of the poses to fit her. She had also illustrated a story of how she was a swimmer. When she swims, she wears a flipper on her prosthetic to help even out the power of her legs. She noted that with the flipper on, her balance while walking around the pool deck was improved because of the increased surface area and flexibility. This is incredibly applicable to the opportunity we are addressing with Jenna and I was very excited to share this with her at our meeting today (Sunday). Jenna gave us a ton of helpful information and deeper perspective on this opportunity, and really loved the flipper story. We are excited to start designing for this issue as she would love to use/wear our solution to all of her yoga classes if all goes well!