Author: Saloni Nahar

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Digital Making Final Reflection

I was really excited for this course because I wanted to make something tangible. I am in an organization on campus called Design for America, so I was familiar with the design process and interested in how we would apply it in class. I ended up learning a lot through this class and I’m thankful for the opportunity to take it.

Week 2

How do you use what you have to make something better?

-Ron

Ron said this above quote when we visited the DRES facility. I really like it because it speaks to the opportunity out there without having to invent something new.

Week 3/4/5/6

These weeks really served as times where we explored, conducted interviews, talked through different ideas, and spent time learning in the fab lab. Week 3 was when we had the cold day, so we stayed in and video chatted Milestone Labs along with our mentors. We saw an opportunity after speaking to Ryan, who said he wasn’t able to really do video interviews because of the heavy equipment and setting it up. This led to our first how can we statement:
“How can we can improve the ability to multitask for people with limited mobility in their arms or are in wheelchairs. ”

Week 4 is when we established our team name as well as did user interviews. These interviews helped us discover more opportunity areas, including the area of grabbing things.

Week 5 is when we curated a bunch of our ideas and sorted through them. We came up with multiple categories ranging from school/work life to personal life. After discussing our insights with one of my team members Huan, I discovered an area of interest which I was curious to explore more which was independence. We originally were looking to explore multitasking this activity helped me consider the element of just being able to do things by yourself.

Week 6 is when we came up with a few more how might we statements.

How Might We create a way for wheelchair users to see what is behind them?

How might we create a way for wheelchair users to grab heavy or hard to grab items easier and independently?

How Might Design an affordable assistive tool?

Week 7

This week Mehmet lead us through an exercise where we looked at our How might we statements from the perspectives of different users. This includes designing for an older person versus a child. It was interesting how the user we were designing for inspired us to think more out of the box. This was a great exercise for us because we actually created something and for the first time thought that we were on to something. I think it was important for us to have this discovery because even though this was far from the design we ended up pursuing, it got us excited at the time.

Week 8/9/10

These weeks are when we met with Dr McDonagh as well as story boarded in class. We were still working on the idea of a glove at this point to help with limited mobility. These conversations and ideating helped us visualize more what our potential project could look like. We also video chatted Milestone labs and got some more insight on our project. We were going forward with the glove but there was still a lot of questions on what exactly we would design,

MAKE-A-THON

This is when everything changed for my team. We went from several ideas this semester to deciding to dedicate to this weekend to creating a watch strap. This came from meeting John McSween at the meeting before the Make-A-Thon. He can’t wear many watches because of his limited ability to pinch. He also tried using a magnetic strap before, but it came in the way of his wheelchair. We spent the weekend prototyping and working hard to come up with a design for him.

The Make-A-Thon taught me a lot. We had to be patient and stay optimistic even when we weren’t sure if we could make something good. We ended up being one of the winning teams which was incredible. The money we won allowed us to buy a watch for John, and redesign the strap for his watch.

Post Make-A-Thon

We ordered material, hit the fab lab, and made a usable watch band.

LESSONS LEARNED

  1. Human centered design is super challenging but super rewarding. I’m so glad we got to make something that John can actually use and wear.
  2. IT is important to be understanding when working with others. My team members all had different things going on at different times but we really depended on each other to do what we can when we could.

THANK YOU NOTES

Thank you John for helping us create this! Your feedback and positive attitude during this process really motivated us.

Thank you Huan for your passion. You brought so much interest and curiosity into this project and I’m grateful I got to know you better through the process.

Thank you Eric for your persistence. You thought about using the hook after we told you to think of something other than velcro, and then worked really hard to make the final watch band.

Thank you Charlotte for all your optimism and help in the class. You were such an awesome TA!

Thank you Mehmet for all your guidance and advice. It was great to learn from you and I really appreciate all the time you dedicated to this class.

Thank you Professor Sachdev for creating a course like this that really challenged us to work hard and do good.

Thank you to all my classmates for inspiring me with your designs and making the world a better place 🙂 It has been a great learning experience being surrounded by such talented people.

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~MakeAThon~

Wow. What a weekend. Starting on Friday, I went in thinking about how I wanted to suggest to my group that we reconsider what we were going to design. I was really interested in pursuing the watch idea especially because of the excitement that John had saying that he would love to be able to wear a watch. After successfully convincing my team that this would be a good challenge to pursue, we got started.

Because we changed our idea the first day of the MakeAThon, a lot of our prior research was no longer applicable. Since we ordered materials to potentially make a glove however, we could still use it to test out making a wrist strap. We also utilized the buttons, rings, and flexible string that was available in the Fab Lab. Friday night we ended with a prototype that had some potential but was still hard to put on, but we were ultimately hopeful that we would be able to come up with something.

Starting on Saturday we started exploring the sports band. Charlie printed apple watch faces, and I started experimenting with string based off of some other fun designs we saw online. Saturday we also met with a guy named Barrett who gave us some feedback on if he could wear our watch along with John and Isaiah. They all gave us great feedback and we headed back to the lab with John and Isaiah to keep on working.

Once we got back was when more progress started to happen. Charlie made a prototype that worked with a good length and used velcro. I started to see how I good add my string designs to his prototype. Another thing we tried to do also was challenge the idea of using velcro, as isn’t the most fashionable things. Eric thought of using hooks as the main way to close off the watch strap which was a great idea. So going into Sunday we had two prototypes. One that used velcro and string for an aesthetic purpose, and one that used mainly hooks to avoid using as much velcro.

The MakeAThon was a long and tiring process but it taught me a few important lessons.

  1. Having a good attitude is everything. It is especially needed when you’re not even sure where you’re going yet.
  2. Sometimes getting angry or upset at someone isn’t even worth it. Especially if you’re working on a tight deadline.
  3. Even if you don’t know what to do, do something. Try something, talk to someone, research. Just do something.
  4. Teamwork makes the dream work.

Overall, it felt really good to have a working low fidelity prototype at the end of this, but I think it is equally important to recognize that even if we didn’t that would’ve been okay. We are college students with not that much time in a race to make an impact and the reality is that changing the world with a mind blowing idea and figuring it all out in 48 hours in unrealistic. Collectively all the students who participated this weekend gave up a lot of time and a lot of magic happened this weekend. I hope everyone is proud of their work regardless of what stage they ended at by the end of the MakeAThon.

What’s next is ordering a watch with our Amazon gift cards and create a more put together band for John so we can give him a watch with our band.

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Preparing for the Make-A-Thon

This week we started class by hearing someone speak from iVenture. This was cool for me because I am currently working with YouMatter studios that is an iVenture start up. I think it is super awesome that our school has a program that helps fund startups, and this would be a great way for some of the groups in our class to continue their projects. Unfortunately since I’m graduating I don’t think we would participate in this, but she did mention how seniors can still establish a team with younger members, as they can take it forward next year. That is nice to hear because we do have a sophomore on our team, so if we do want our product to develop more he is someone who will still be on campus to utilize on campus resources.

We also spent some time with our team discussing materials we’ll need for the makeathon and we created some drawing designs. We also spoke to Milestone Labs and speaking with them made me realize and important discovery. Eating with a spoon is different than eating with a fork because it requires a stabilized hand movement leading up to the mouth, which is another type of movement we would have to design for. This is why we have decided to only focus on designing for eating with a fork. By just focusing on this we just have the motions of putting the glove on, securing the fork in the glove, picking up the food item, and then eating the item.

Going into the Makeathon I am in contact with a student who could be a great resource to test our product, but I am still figuring out if he is free for an interview this upcoming week. We also need to get utensils that we could find at restaurants to practice picking up food items. We don’t know yet which material will be the best for our gloves, which is why we are thinking of requesting to order multiple materials. I am excited for the makethon but also nervous! I hope everything works out and we are able to create something that we’re proud of!

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Preparing for the Make-A-Thon

This week we met with other students who are also going to be participating in the Make-A-Thon. We also got to hear people in the community as well as more potential mentors speak to us. While we were interviewing our users with mentioning or idea for the glove, we found a new challenge of being able to use a knife to cut and a fork at the same time. It requires a lot of force on food like tough meat and the plate tends to slip away. This was interesting for us to learn because we were just focused on a glove that helps with grabbing things, but this was a new opportunity space that we haven’t thought about.

My friend Brandon who works in Beckwith recommended a student to talk to about grabbing things, so we might still interview him this week if we believe that is the direction we want to go in. There seem to be many opportunities now and it is hard to decide on the one we want to pursue.

Another opportunity that came with talking to one of the users John, was that he cannot wear a watch, but would love to. John has Charcot Marie Tooth. This affects both motor and sensory nerves. He has trouble with buttons and zippers, and would appreciate something that would help him deal with them as well as stylish. This discovery about the watch idea came from the student pictured above asking him about it. He had the opportunity to try a strap for a watch that was magnetic, but that interfered with his wheels when he was pushing them forward. I think this is an area that I want to pursue more, because it not only excited John but it also seems feasible.

I got the number of the guy pictured above so we could work with him during the Make-A-Thon, but unfortunately I don’t remember his name. I am hoping to figure that out soon in order to see if he has thought about his watch idea more.

Next steps include interviewing the student Brandon suggested to see if we want to finalize pursuing the glove idea and figuring out who the student pictured above is to contact him before the Make-A-Thon.

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Week 9: Watches and Storyboards

This week was our last week at the Fab Lab, and we started by finishing up our watches. This was really cool because we were able to actually make something. I haven’t worked with electronics or wires in a long time and it was super inspiring to be able to make what we did, to show us what’s possible.

It was also eye opening to be able to have a code and then connected it through a wire and have it added to our watch. It made something that looks so advanced on the outside feel a little more simple. Building this and learning through these workshops has definitely taught us that we can make a lot in the Fab Lab and the more we come in the more we will be able to grow and learn. I know my team will definitely be using the Fab Lab to help us make the final version of our product and I am excited to come back now with the knew making knowledge that I have.

After we finished our watches, we worked on designing the experience we want our users to have with our product. One of the pieces of the storyboard we created is displayed below.

We will bring our gloves to Beckwith first, to have residents get to try them on and use them in the common room. Then they will have the option to take it out with them if they want. Our ideal experience involves them being able to comfortably eat out with friends while being able to feed themselves. Then they will tell their friends about their experience and that’s out we would spread the word about our product.

Moving forward we still have a lot of work to do. We want to have a user that we can use as someone to help us design the glove for and test prototypes with. I will reach out to my friend Brandon this week to see if there is anyone he can think of that would like to help us by testing our prototypes. The end of the semester is coming quickly which is putting pressure on us to finalize our products, which is exciting and stressful at the same time. I am nervous that about the time crunch but know that we have put a lot of work in so I am hoping for the best.

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Circuits and Milestone Labs

This week we went back to the Fab Lab and got to learn more about using circuits. This was interesting because I haven’t really worked with batteries or wires in a really long time. It made the seemingly complicated task of lighting something up or connecting a wire to battery a lot more simple. I think it will be cool to see if any teams decide to incorporate lights into their prototype. There were also interesting things about making this work like lining up the wires in the same line and making sure the wires were stuck tightly to the battery.

Now I am realizing how light up birthday cards and singing cards work as there are simple wire connected to a battery taped inside or behind the card. I don’t think our group will use this in our prototype but it was still a really awesome learning experience and I am glad we were giving the opportunity to have this hands on experience.

Afterwards we talked to Milestone labs. We walked them through our process so far and told them how we are now stuck on how exactly to design this glove and what material to use. One suggestion we got was the ability to change where a utensil can be held in a globe through a dial or something because everyone might not want to hold something the same way and that will give them more freedom. We also got some suggestions on material to use.

We are hoping to find someone to model our glove after so that we can show our prototype to them. When we met with Dr. McDonagh she told us we should also put our hands in freezing cold water to simulate what having limited hand strength would be like. I’m excited to be in this phase because this is where the magic gets to happen 🙂

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Uncovering Ideas

This week we went to the Fab Lab!! It was super exciting because I really enjoy going to the fab lab, and have made several laptop stickers there. It’s always nice to go there because if you could define creativity by a building, the fab lab encompasses it. Everywhere you look you can get inspired by the many things created within the space.

We started off with a general tour, and then we split up into groups to learn different things. My group worked on learning Inkscape, which is a great program to design in. While we were designing a watch, we learned how to use different tools in the program. I had fun playing around with all the colors and shapes and made the image below.

After coming together, we had a quick paced brainstorming session with our team. It was cool because Mehmet lead us through an exercise where we looking at our How might we statements from the perspectives of different users. This includes designing for an older person versus a child. It was interesting how the user we were designing for inspired us to think more out of the box.

Originally to help a user see behind them, I had thought about a video camera attached to the top of the wheelchair facing back, and a phone app allowing the user to see what is going on. When thinking about designing for someone older, I though that maybe they won’t use technology so I thought of attaching a mirror to one of the arm chairs looking back. Then when he told us to design for kids we were thinking and conversing when he came by. He said “think of designing for your niece or something.”

That made me think of my young cousin and how little she is, so she might need an attachable arm that can go up and down and hold the mirror so it is more at her height. It was really cool to see how thinking about designing for a specific person really helped me come up with something. This is the design that my team decided to prototype this week, which is really exciting as well.



To the left is a pipe cleaner prototype of the model, with the cardboard piece acting as a placeholder for a mirror. We think the pipe cleaners show the flexibility of the design and how it can expand to a higher level as well as collapse all the way down. Ultimately we think this flexible attachment might be able to hold more that just a mirror as well.

We are meeting my friend Brandon who works in Beckwith later today, so I am excited to see what he has to say about our ideas.

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Week 6: How Might We Fusion 360

This week we had an assignment in Autodesk Fusion 360, and then worked on creating a phone holder together in class. I ended up working on the Autodesk pre-assignment on a school computer because it was slowly loading on my computer and taking a really long time to open. Thus during this workshop I had a similar experience, as my computer was taking the longest time to open it up.

Dan Banach did a really great job leading this workshop, because he went slowly and taught us shortcuts. Because my computer was being very slow it was very hard for me to follow along int the beginning because I couldn’t do the steps with him as he was doing them like the rest of the class was.

I was stuck on these screen for a long time as it was taking a long time to load

I got assistance because it was taking so long to load, and eventually got into the software. Because I joined late I wasn’t able to model it exactly to how everyone else was modeling it, but I still got to play around with material and some of the visual design elements of how to make it look within the software. I also I think there are a lot of fun tools on fusion 360 and am excited to use it to model the designs we make in this course!

Next we worked on How Might We statements. My group decided on a central theme around Independence, and had 3 sub-themes of Tools & Attachments, Vision, and Affordability.

The 3 How Might We statements that came from our sub-themes are the following:

How Might We create a way for wheelchair users to see what is behind them?

How might we create a way for wheelchair users to grab heavy or hard to grab items easier and independently?

How Might Design an affordable assistive tool?

I think our last How Might We will be a sub-theme of whatever we create, because affordability is something we want to be part of our product no matter what. As we keep moving along in the design process it is hard to not jump to what is and isn’t possible in terms of design, but we know it is important to try not to think of the final product right now and just trust the process.

In terms of future plans, we are hoping to interview my friend who works in Beckwith this week, bringing our first two How Might We’s to him and seeing what he thinks. Also speaking to him can lead to insights of what he helps the residents with and some of the challenges he sees everyday.

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Week 5: Inspiration and New Discoveries

This week started with presentations from 4 speakers. One from Illini Service Dogs, one from John Hornick, another from Jeff Ginger, and last from our TA Mehmet Aydin.

Illini Service Dogs spoke about challenge areas and resources available to continue exploring this challenges. Since for privacy issues it is hard to get a chance to observe actual training, it was useful to hear of different ways research can still be gathered. This can be transferred to all of our projects even if we aren’t working with ISD, as a good reminder that we don’t have to be confined to our mentors for research and also think out of the box to interview people who might have different insights and provide a different perspective. I have a friend who works at Beckwith Residential Services, so my team is planning to reach out to him for an interview.

John Hornick walked us through the scope of 3D printing and reminded us how big of a field it is. It was inspiring to hear all the different projects that have used 3D printing because it is easy to forget how powerful this tool really is.

Jeff Ginger talked about his experience making as well as the Fab Lab. I have visited the Fab Lab several times because because I was first introduced to it through a class freshman year. Since then I’ve gone back to make laptop stickers as the VP Community Service of my business fraternity, and to make a shirt through a developmental workshop with Design for America. One thing he brought up that really stood out to me was the idea of DIWO. Do it with others is an important way to look at design because these kinds of spaces makes it easy to work with others who have different backgrounds and learn from each other.

Finally our TA Mehmet spoke about design from a broader view, talking about the total experience. He discussed the MRI scanners used in hospitals, and how kids were afraid of going in them. He shared that after making them themed in a fun way like a pirate theme, kids were more willing to go inside. This was a great example to hear especially because they didn’t reinvent a product, yet they still changed an experience. This is related to what we’re trying to do in adding a little more joy into our experts lives, and this example is a good learning lesson to how that can be done without changing the core of the product.

He shared that after making them themed in a fun way like a pirate theme, kids were more willing to go inside. This was a great example to hear especially because they didn’t reinvent a product, yet they still changed an experience. This is related to what we’re trying to do in adding a little more joy into our experts lives, and this example is a good learning lesson to how that can be done without changing the core of the product.

We ended the day with an exercise to organize our insights and find an opportunity area from them. My team did 2 interviews last week, so we were synthesizing the insights we got from both of our interviewees.

We came up with multiple categories ranging from school/work life to personal life. After discussing our insights with one of my team members Huan, I discovered an area of interest that I am curious to explore more which is independence. A lot of tasks our users can already do but it requires another person as well. We originally were looking to explore multitasking but I think another element of that is being able to do things by yourself.

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Blueprint

We started this session off by learning from Mike Hansen of EarthSense. EarthSense helps farmers leave the tedious task of measuring crops up to robots. His knowledge and story was great to hear because he showed us how design plays out within a company. He also talked about the observations that were made when watching farmers use the robot on site. This allowed them to find out things like they liked to put stuff like papers on the robot. This is a good example of how observing a user can help lead to more discoveries. He also showed us how many different variations of different pieces he has made and that’s a good reminder of the fact that although the end result is really cool and exciting, the process can be long and it is important to trust that it will eventually result in a useful product.

This week we also made a company name and 3D printed the logo. One of the former members of my team dropped the course, so I also met our newest team member Eric. We decided to name ourselves blueprint because we thought it was similar to the drafts of making designs as it is usually used as a paper version of a model for architecture. We sketched many designs to try to make something that encompassed the name, but finally working on the software itself led us to our final design.

Finally we talked about what we will do going forward in terms or research. We agreed we needed to do some more interviews. On Friday my team went to Beckwith Residential Support Services in Nugent to see if we could find anyone to talk to. We had a hard time getting in at first but then discovered we could just call the front desk so we didn’t have to wait for someone to come out or go in.

After getting in we asked the front desk if she had the contact info of anyone we could speak too. She told us to check if anyone was in based on the hallway of offices, but unfortunately since it was past 5 PM no one was there.

We spotted someone coming up and were nervous to approach a stranger and see if they would be willing to be interviewed at first, but after asking she was very willing to be interviewed. Her name was Selina, and she is studying Latin. We spoke about a lot of things like what she does in her free time and what she wants to do for her career. Something that would help her is something that could help her grab stuff.

We decided to also interview someone else this week, so I reached out to a high school classmate, Avi, who lives in Beckwith.

We met with him today, and had a very in-depth conversation about his career goals and his experience. He spoke about having more door openers at public buildings and coming up with a way to preserve historic site while also making them more accessible. I had to leave early, but he gave my teammates some more people to talk to.

Our interview with Avi really made me realize how much opportunity there is in this space. We were able to get a better glimpse into his life and I am looking forward to continue to interview more users to better understand how we can help them multitask.