Eric Zhang

May 5, 2019May 5, 2019

A Design Journey to Make Some Difference

Expectations

At the very beginning, I head about this course from my friend Ruei when we were in Chicago and watching Heat VS Bulls. I learned about that this course is focused on 3D printing and students will have lots of opportunities to learn about other skills such as designing method, prototyping, and modeling. I still remember the time when I walked by the Makerlab and I was attracted by the 3D printers. I have never seen a 3D printer before. To me, Makerlab was like the mysterious palace that I need to make lots of efforts to get in. Due to my strong interest in 3D printing and designing, I sent an email to Professor Sachdev after I came back to Champaign. Even though I couldn’t make to the first two weeks’ classes, Professor Sachdev still provided me the opportunities to join you guys. Looking back to the beginning of this semester, I really appreciate the opportunities given to me. Speaking of the expectations, to be honest, I didn’t even think about what we’re going to do this semester, and the only thing that I kept in mind was that we’re going to design a product for our mentors or certain group of people. I was like a freshman to this course when I first walked in the class and found out that we have different teams. At the first few weeks, I noticed that other teams did lots of stuff and share them in class. I was really freak out since I thought my team was not actually making any progress even though we scheduled a lot of interview with potential group of customers. I even thought we probably couldn’t make it till the end of this semester. “Unfortunately”, we did make our product and we actually used our gift card won in Make-A-Thon to buy a watch and redesign our product for our target customer John.

Week 2: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-2-reflection-4/

Week 3: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-3-reflection-5/

Week 4: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-4-reflection-learning-from-interviewing/

Week 5: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-5-reflection-6/

Throughout the whole process, what I didn’t expect is that sometimes team members and I would have some different ideas and it was hard to get consensus. Actually, from this experience, I learned about how to collaborate with other people who have different perspectives. I found it was not only about communication but also you need to think about what you can do to benefit everyone and gather everyone together and work on the same goal. I truly realized that it’s hard to manage a team from doing the team project. The second thing that I didn’t expect is that changing our product at the last minute. Since we’ve been working on some glove design that help people with disabilities to hold things like utensils. However, after the meeting before Make-A-Thon, we met John who told us that he has problem wearing a watch and he actually wants a special designed watch so that he can put it on without making too much efforts. We noticed that the special loops design on his socks. Inspired by that and based on Saloni’s suggestion we started making the watch strap at Make-A-Thon. At first we all thought it was a really challenging project and we were stuck for a long time. After spending time trying out different methods, we found a special way to design the watch strap by utilizing simple physics mechanism. At last, we finished our two prototype on presentation day, and both of them worked well for John.

Resources and People

To be honest, I never expected that this course have such a lot of resources and invites lots of guest speakers from different fields and companies. I would say the Professor Sachdev is really good at networking. Sincerely, I appreciate the help and advice provided by all the mentors, TAs, classmates, guest speakers, mentors from Fablab, people we interviewed (Ryan, Zain, Selina, John, Avery), judges, professors from different classes, and everyone who helps us in throughout the whole semester. Due to your help, we can have access to so many resources that can help us improving our products in to next level. Thank you all for your help and time devoted into this course.

Due to the great guest speakers, we have chance to learn about how to design on Autodesk Fusion 360, 3D printing skills, laser cutting technique, Arduino, and sewing skills. These skills really helped us a lot in our designing process.

Week 6: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-6-introducing-technical-skills/

Week 7: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-7-fablab-reflection/

Week 8: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-8-back-to-the-fablab/

Week 9: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-9-reflection/

Week 10: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/make-a-thon-pre-night-meeting/

Week 11: https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/one-last-week-before-make-a-thon/

Make-A-Thon & Prototyping

I would say Make-A-Thon is the highlight of BADM357. We finally get the time to design our product. Since we changed our project, we spent some time doing research and look for any opportunities that can make our product work. We stayed at Fablab for the whole weekend and kept working on our products. On that Sunday, we finished two watch strap prototypes. We utilized sewing skills and 3D printing techniques through the process of production. We also print out some slides and put them on try-fold.

During the presentation, we introduced our designing process and product to all the judges. Fortunately we won the prize which provide each of our team member $100 Amazon gift card. I was so happy and also shocked. I felt that our work finally got recognized by other people. The recognization also provided us the faith to continue improving our products to next level.

Week 13:https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/make-a-thon-3/:

After Maker-A-Thon, we decided to buy a watch with the gift card that we won, remake a better strap that fits the watch face, and give it to John. Last week, we ordered some materials that we need to make the strap. We ordered bra hook, elastic straps, and velcro. We spent one day discussing how we should design the strap and two afternoons on making the product. We adjust the size, the angle, and the surface design based on John’s wrist and his idea. After all the efforts, I showed the watch to John this afternoon. He was really happy about it, and it perfectly fitted his writs. I felt so happy at that time since my teammates and I actually turn this project in course into a product that can help someone meet his demand. Going back to the objective of this course, I realized how important human-centered design is, how hard it is to design a product, how many interview that we need to conduct, and how happy we finally helped someone who needs our help.

Thanks again to all the resources and help provided by all the mentors, guest speakers, sponsors, students, and faculties. I actually learned a lot of technical skills such as sewing, 3D printing, researching, interviewing, laser cutting, drawing, designing, teamwork, collaboration, communication, and brainstorming. I really appreciate this valuable experience. This course changed my future career since it offered me so many possible opportunities to discover in the future. I discovered my interests in designing fields, and I hope to continue my journey on this path. I’ll definitely recommend this course to my friends. Well I wouldn’t say it’s a course. It should be an opportunity to start your adventure. Love Y’all 🙂 Happy Graduation for seniors! Hope to see the rest of you who will still be on campus in Fall! STAY TUNE FOR BADM357 PROMOTION VIDEO!!

Eric Zhang

April 21, 2019April 21, 2019

Make-A-Thon

Last weekend we participated in Make-A-Thon, the “Final Project” of BADM357. Starting from Friday afternoon, we had a meeting together and get to started planning on how we are going to spend the weekend. We didn’t follow our original idea which is the gloves that can hold utensils. Instead, Saloni suggested to focus on John’s concern about the watch band. Due to his disability, he cannot pinch things so that he’s not able to put to regular watch by himself. He tried magnetic watch band. However, the magnetic watch band would stick on his wheelchair when he rolls the wheels. Therefore, we need to come up with an idea that can solve this problem.

To be honest, I thought the watch band idea might be too complicated to accomplish. However, my teammates said that even though this product is more challenging, it really can help someone who has the need. After doing some research, I changed my mind and I determined to work on the new idea. I didn’t come up with lots of ideas on Friday since I was really tired and my brain didn’t function that well. Plus, there was a mandatory event that showed up suddenly from my club, so I had to go and rushed back to Fablab once it’s done. I really appreciate my teammates that they didn’t really get mad at me. After I went back, they told me more about their progress and what problem they were trying to solve. My teammates said John doesn’t like the velcro design on the band because he thought it was not a cool thing to be put on your watch band. Therefore, I did some research online and came up with an idea. I tried to make band that can utilized hooks and loops. Thanks to Team 1 who offered us a elastic strap. I made my band based on the strap they provided us. After that night, we made a prototype that can function perfectly. Since Saloni and Huan kept working on the original prototype, we had two prototypes in total.

On Sunday, we went back in the morning and finished our trip-fold for the presentation. We also asked John to try our new prototypes. The prototypes works perfectly for him and he really likes our ideas. During the presentation, we showed all the judges that how we came up with different ideas and the process of making our prototypes. I think we did a great job in the presentation part, since we have clear demonstration and elaboration. We also answered all the questions from judges perfectly. They seem to be nice people so I thought we all did great.

After presentation, all the teams went back to the meeting room and waited for the announcement of the winner. I never thought about that if we can earn the prize before I went in the meeting room. I did not even think about it. I think all my teammates were just too focusing on our projects so that we didn’t even have the time thinking about if we can win the prize or not. When the professor called our name “Blueprint”, we were all shocked, and obviously we were not prepared for that. At that time I just realized that we made it, our efforts turns into positive results.

In short, I really learned a lot from the first Make-A-Thon. I realize the importance of communication between team members and the importance of collaboration. Even though we might have some different perspectives, if we can sit down and open our heart to talk with each other, everything will work out. I really want to say thank you for everyone who participated the Make-A-Thon. Thank you so much for all the amazing faculties, sponsor companies, TAs, mentors from Fablab. I really appreciate your help and advice. I think Maker-A-Thon is a happy ending of BADM357, but it’s also a brand new start for us to make our dreams come true. I hope there will be the 2nd, 3rd, 10th Make-A-Thon in the future.

Eric Zhang

April 7, 2019April 7, 2019

One last week before Make-A-Thon

This week we had a the Test-Protocol assignment. Each team designed a series of procedures and plans to conduct its project. At first, I was a little bit lost about this assignment. After I look through the documents shared on the assignment’s page, I had more understanding and clue to this assignment. By reading through other team’s test protocol, I was also inspired and add more details to the protocol of our team.

On Tuesday, our class started with the presentation of a guest speaker from iVenture. Through her speech, I realized that there is a thing called iVenture which encourage and support students to begin their startups. I found it’s a really great opportunity for students to make some of their prototypes come to a real product which can be put into the market. I asked for the guest speaker’s contact information after class, and I will reach out to her and learn more about this great opportunity.

Later on, we have the chance to update our project with the mentors from milestone lab. We tell them about our progress after last time we met them. They also provided us some ideas that help us further to our next step. Since there are lots of different movements when we hold different tools to reach different goals, mentors told us to currently focus on how to hold a fork with the gloves at this current stage. After we reach the goal of using fork to eat, we should move to the next stage which aims to focus on more purposes.

Move to the next stage, professor asked us to discuss about some materials that we might use at the Make-A-Thon. After discussing with my teammates, we came up with some ideas. However, later on we found out that it was really hard to determine the amount of materials that we might need, since we were not too sure about what we really need and we didn’t want to waste money to buy some useless materials. Then we did some research and came up with a few materials. We also can utilize materials in Fablab during the Make-A-Thon. Speaking of the Make-A-Thon, we will also have a member who’s from the class held by Fablab. Hopefully, he’ll also join our team and try to figure out how are we going to start making our product. I hope every team can contribute to their projects and good luck to everyone!

Eric Zhang

March 31, 2019March 31, 2019

Make-A-Thon Pre-night Meeting

On Tuesday, we had a meeting with all the students who will attend Make-A-Thon. Some of them are from the art class and a few people are from a class in Fablab. Lots of them are actually art and design major students. I didn’t expect there would be other students from another college attending the Make-A-Thon. I think it would be really interesting by having such a diverse participant. Definitely, this will make sure that the products we’ll make in the Make-A-Thon will be more creative and effective.

After the meeting, we get the chance talking to some guest speakers and mentors. Saloni and I interviewed one of the guest speaker who’s also a wheelchair user. We asked about his situation and we found that our ideas of gloves don’t really help him that much since he can hold certain things and use them effectively. Later on, we found a challenge that it’s hard for him to cut the meat into pieces. He is using a special knife which cost lots of energy to be utilized. It might be a great opportunity for us to think about if there’s any specific problems like this waiting there to be solved. We might gain more insights and ideas by focusing on those specific challenge. He also talked about his socks with special loop which can help him put it on his feet. I found this is a really innovative idea.

We also meet another student from the class in Fablab, and we introduced our product to him. I can tell he’s really good at critical thinking and he really came up with lots of ideas that suggest us that we might also can think about other opportunities but not just focus on our current idea. Through the conversation with the guest speaker and the student, we also discovered a new challenge which is it’s really difficult for the guest speaker to put on a watch by himself. The student mentioned magnetic watch, however the guest speaker said sometimes it might stick to the wheels when he rolls the wheels of his wheelchair. This provide us a whole new idea to explore.

At last, we asked the student to join our team and provide more advice to our project. I really look forward to collaborate with him in next few weeks. He also knows more technical skills using the equipments in the Fablab, and I believed that this will expand our ideas with barriers of the difficulties in operating different machines. I hope we can come up with a more comprehensive idea of our project and start working on it.

Eric Zhang

March 17, 2019March 18, 2019

Week 9 Reflection

This week we also went to the Fablab, and this our third time spending our time there. We continued working on our watch design. To be honest, I didn’t expect that we would finish the watch before we move back to the maker lab. Anyway, it’s great opportunity for us to accomplish a goal and finish a whole product.

Basically, the watch was used to detect whether you curl and twist correctly. This is why we make those two words printed on the watch’s face. Continuing working on the circuit, we started learning coding and input those code and instructions into the circuit board. After doing a series of fancy operation, we can make our light turn on and off. Seriously, I don’t know how it works, but thanks to the really detailed and clear instruction, I finally understand how to make it work. Then the instructor gave us some the two cases of the watch, and they started teaching us how to assemble them together into a final product.

Later, we put the circuit board between the two wood cases and glue them together. Then, we use the plastic strip to combine them together. Moreover, we also need to put the wires and the tilt sensor together and pull them out through the loop. The tilt sensor can sense the rotation of the watch and indicate what action you’re doing. I found that one of the tilt sensor cannot be connect to the wire perfectly, and it’s kinda loose, so I used the glue to stick them together. Since the watch face should be fashion, I used to put “Supreme” & “Versace” logos on it. However, later I found that those logos are kinda of useless, so I deleted them and in order to make my watch face more fashion.

The parts that we use to assemble the watch

Combining the cases and circuit together

After we finished our product, Mehmet asked us to go back to the weekly statement activity. Last week, we begin to work on creating the story board of our product and how our customer can benefit from using our product. Since we started doing the weekly statement activity, I found it’s a really interesting and efficient way for us to learn more about what we reach so far of our product. It’s great opportunity for us to explore more and make developments to our product. By drawing the story board, I realized that there’re actually more approaches for us to modify our products and benefit more people.

Later on, Saloni, Ruei, and I discussed the video project of our class. We decided to make some interview videos, just simply asked a few questions to the professor, students, TA, and mentors. Hope we can have more shots and footages in next week’s meeting.

Eric Zhang

March 10, 2019March 18, 2019

Week 8: Back to the Fablab

Last week, we continued our journey in Fablab. We kept the original group and switch session. Since I was in the watch face design group in the first week, I was in the circuit design group last week. We were given some parts of the circuit and learned how to assemble them together to make the whole circuit work. I wasn’t really familiar with the circuit, since I didn’t learn too much knowledge of physics back in high school. Luckily, the whole procedure is not too complicated, I finally made it work. I wouldn’t imagine that I would have chance to learn such knowledge in college, since this is related to physics or engineering field. I found the circuit design is also a crucial part for students with different majors, because with this knowledge people can design some electronic products but not limited to simple ones. However, learning one class is far not enough, I will probably do more research and try to learn more knowledge in this field.

*Circuit Design* with Button and Resistance

Later, we have some time discussing about our product and prototype. Since I wasn’t be bale to attend an interview and a meeting with professor last weekend, my teammate told me about something they discussed with the professor and they decided to focus on designing a thing that can help wheelchair-user to grab things independently. Therefore, we talked about how to redesign our prototype and which material we can use.

I also started filming the video for BADM357, since I registered for the video project instead of the weekly summary. I filmed some footage about teams discussing with mentor, students asking question to instructors, and the great time of having pizza! Just incase you don’t feel good about being filmed, please feel free to let me know. Please keep doing what you’re doing when you find I’m filming you, I just want to make the footages look more smooth, or also you can look at the camera and say hi to the future students. Thank you guys for understanding!

Finally, we had chance talking about our updated ideas and the progress we made so far to the mentors from milestone lab. The mentors are satisfied with our ideas, and they also provide us some advice related to the material and what we need to think about for future steps. They also suggested us thinking about the flexibility that our customers may want and how the real product work in reality. For the next move, I think we need to make a workable prototype to testify our ideas. We should think about the different degrees of some objects that can be held in our gloves and see how it works. For the next week, we’ll focus on making our prototype and conducting more interview with our prototype and see how well it works and where we can improve it.

Eric Zhang

March 3, 2019March 3, 2019

Week 7: Fablab Reflection

Last week, we went to Fablab and learned some technical skills in designing and laser cutting. I was impressed by the Fablab, since it has so many different materials and machines for people to design their products. They also have fabrics product which is really cool. They first showed us some products they made on the desk an then led us take a tour of the Fablab.

Some stuff the instrutors made in Fablab

Our instructor showed us the Laser Cutting Machine

After the tour, we’re separated into two groups. I was assigned in a group designing a watch. The other group was doing something related to circuit I think. Then our instructor teach us step by step in how to design in the face of the watch. The software is kind of professional. I got lost a few times throughout the whole process.

After finishing the design, we continued to do our TA’s statement. This time is designing our products. He asked us to draw down our ideas related to our desired products. I first thought it’s hard to come up with one. After doing some sketch on the paper, I then started getting into the brainstorming mode. My teammates are also really creative. Based on our designs, I found out that we all focused on the holder we talked about in our project. The main point is to help people hold something.

We had different ideas related to different situation: design for kids, design for elderly, design with lots of budgets and limited budgets. Instead of thinning about getting a backup camera for our target customers, using a holder which can hold a mirror would be more efficient and affordable. After the voting, at last we all agreed on a foldable holder attached on the wheelchair which have multiple uses such as hold a mirror, hold a cup, hold a phone, and so on, since this idea is the most affordable and the most feasible one. Saloni mentioned that there is one material that we can utilize but I forgot what it is. Anyway, we found that material in Fablab and use them did two small sample models for our design.

On Friday, I spent some of my free time going back to the Fablab and laser-cut my design for the watch. I got some help from the people who worked there. I really appreciate their patience, since I knew nothing about the machine. They showed me each preparing steps for the machine. Finally, I got my watch face cut out from a wood board.

Hopefully, we can learn more technical skills in next week. I realize the Fablab is a really great place for us to explore the designing world. More importantly, we can make our products come to real with the help of those fantastic machines in the Fablab.

Eric Zhang

February 24, 2019March 18, 2019

Week 6 Introducing Technical Skills

This week we get the chance to learn how to use Fusion 360. Our guest speaker Dan Banach from the Autodesk gave us a great workshop about introducing how to use this application and leading us to build our own phone holder. At first, I had no clue of how it works. I had some experience in using editing application such as Lightroom and Final Cut. Since Autodesk is also from the Adobe, I thought it’s gonna be similar with those apps. However, I was wrong about it. This was definitely a brand new experience to me. Throughout the process, I got lost a few times. My teammates and Dan came to help me a few times, and they helped me to finish my phone holder.

To be honest, by learning how to use Autodesk Fusion 360, I found it really helped us to put our thoughts into reality. Sometimes we only come up with simple thoughts and ideas, but we didn’t really have more specific information about our products. By learning more and more technical skills of designing, we can put our ideas into the app and model it. Also, we can actually print them and test it out, since the plastic material is not too expensive. No matter speaking from expense or environment side, Fusion 360 and the 3D printers benefit us a lot. I’m really interested in next week’s activity in Fablab. Hope we can learn something that can help us to get closer to our product.

During the How Might We assignment, our group came up with three insights:

How might we create a way for wheelchair-users to see what’s behind them?
How might we create a way for wheelchair-users to grab some object more independently?
How might we design an affordable assistive tool?

I was kinda freak out about our progress, since I thought that we didn’t actually have a specific idea about which area we should focus on. However, my teammates and TA encouraged me that we were still at the stage of brainstorming and working on this question. I realized that we need to conduct more interviews with more wheelchair-user and find out what is the most feasible and helpful plan that we can work on. Probably, Arielle’s suggestions would be helpful. We might need to try to make an appointment with her in the next week. I hope we can have more progress on our project and get more familiar with deigning applications and skills.

Eric Zhang

February 17, 2019March 18, 2019

Week 5 Reflection

During the class on Wednesday, we were grateful that we can have our guest speaker to provide us more inspiration and advice related to the 3D-printing. I learned about that 3D-printing can actually benefit lots of fields, such as health products, service dogs, daily-life products, and physical ability. It’s really inspiring that people are utilizing this technique to make other people’s life different.

With the guide from our TA, we posted some of the features related to people that we interviewed last week. Each team shared what they’ve done so far, and I was inspired by some of my peers’ great ideas.

After we finished posting our insights, we found three big categories ” life & career”, “future aspiration”, and “major difficulties” based on the response from our interviewees.

This weekend, we conduct an interview with our mentor Ryan and two of his friends Avery and Zain. They shared their life experience, some difficulties that they’re facing, and expectations of our product. Based on their response, I would say different people have different level of disabilities, and it’s really hard to find a way to benefit all of them. Our project is to help them multitask in their daily life. However, based on the advice from Ryan, Zain, and Avery, I think we might need to consider making our goals more specific and realistic, since there are lots of different ways to define “multitask”. It might be more feasible for us to pursue in one goal – making something that can make certain group of people’s life more convenient, even though a small product focusing on one specific area would work.

I would say we need to talk more about the goals of our project this week and try to finalize a clear and feasible direction. We might need to talk more about it with the professor and our TAs. We should consider about their thoughts and advice towards our project. After interviewing 4 people, I found it’s really important for us to help them, and I really want to. I just want to make sure that we can actually make something that’s useful for certain people by the end of this semester.

Eric Zhang

February 10, 2019March 18, 2019

Week 4 Reflection: Learning from interviewing

In last week’s class, I’m glad that we had Mike Hansen, employee from EarthSense, to come down to the Makerlab and share his experience with us. It’s really inspiring that his company is working on developing robots for agricultural use. I didn’t expect that they put in so much efforts to invent such a lot of different models, and they also need to come up with the best one suitable for their customers. They would also do some customization for different needs from their customers. I find this is a really good idea, because in our group project we also need to consider that the targeted group of people may have different needs and purposes of using our products. This inspired me to explore an idea that can contribute to a more flexible product. Big thank you to Mike for sharing his valuable experience.

Later on, we came up with a team name “Blueprint”, and we designed our team’s logo and started printing it. Actually it’s my first time using a 3D-printer. I thought we would do it by hand, but it seems like after we design the logo in the software it would just do it automatically, which is really convenient and efficient.

Last Friday, our team went to Nugent Hall in order to seek for interviewing the director of Beckwith program. However, we didn’t had his contact information, so we didn’t make an appointment. He was probably off work when we got there. Therefore, we decided to asked for residences who passed by if they’re willing to give us some time to conduct a quick interview. Fortunately, Selina Lee, a Latin major student, decide to helped us. During the interview, we did realize and understand that there are some difficulties that she’s facing everyday. For example, she said it’s really hard for her to hold a drink. This is just one tiny difficulty that she’s dealing with everyday, but it also may be a big problem for lots of people who have the same experience as her. After the interview, we had a better understanding of the need of people who have disabilities. This provided us one possible direction that we can work on.

This Sunday, one of our group member Saloni, reached out to her friend from high school and made an appointment to interview Avi M Samuels. We asked him some similar questions as what we asked Selina, such as future career path, what they do in their spare time, and what the difficulties are in their daily life. He’s really friendly person and he see things comprehensively and meticulously. He provided us lots of valuable perspectives and potential resources that we can reach out to. Overall, we really appreciate his help and thanks him for taking his time doing the interview with us.

We look forward to making more progress in the next week. We’ll probably interview our mentor Ryan next week. Due to his busy schedule, we failed to get the chance meeting with him. Each member in our team will do research on different fields. Hopefully, we can come up with a more specific idea about the product that we’re about to design.

Eric Zhang