Course Expectations
My journey in this course all started when I was looking for additional interesting courses to take before the course registration day. After I selected all the courses that allow me to fulfill my graduation requirement, I noticed that I still have the credit hours available to select two courses of my own interest, so I started looking for additional interesting courses on the course explorer. When the course name “Digital Making Seminar” came in front of my eye, I was so amazed that the business school would offer such a course that is related heavily with 3D printing and other types of digital making as well as product design, so I applied. Before the start of the course, I expected the course to have more focus on technical skills, including 3D printing, 3D modeling, 3D scanning, and other digital making skills. But when I entered the course, I noticed that this year we have a focus on the accessible design. This was definitely something that I did not expect, but this did not mean that I didn’t like this course.
Course Experience
During the course, I learned a lot of technical skills that I previously expected, but these skills are not all touched on a deeper level than I expected. This makes me think that my initial expectations of this course was not fully met. However, I learned more things that I did not expect previously, which filled the gap of the unmet expectations. This semester, the course focused primarily on human-centered design with a focus on accessibility design. I think, the primary goal of this course was very inspiring and the overall experience was great without focusing on what my expectations were prior to the course.
In week 2, we visited the Disability Resources & Educational Services facility. This was the first time we met the mentors, people who used their stories to give us inspirations on accessibility product designs. In this experience, I learned how to interview others, learn from their stories while keeping empathy in mind. From these stories and experiences that the mentors told us, I learned to seize the opportunities within these stories and experiences. I also found it very important to understand that people with disabilities are nothing different from people without disabilities. When we are designing items that could improve the user experience that people with disabilities have, we could also apply the same or similar ideas to improve the user experience of people without disabilities. It is more important to capture the opportunities. From this experience, I also learned that I was capturing the opportunities slower than others, perhaps, this was why I was not a designer in the first place. But I learned that even if this was true, I could still come up with design ideas that could improve user experience.
In week 3, we met the Milestone Labs online due to the extreme weather in Champaign on the day of the class. We learned about how the experts from Milestone Labs approach to design problems, discovery opportunities and brainstorm solutions for an opportunity. This was also the first time I realized that people, including me, are so creative in finding simple solutions to overcome small challenges that exist in our everyday lives. However, we usually did not realize that we are solving the small challenges within our daily lives with such simple solutions. I was shocked that I have been so creative in solving the daily challenges that came up as well. I think a big takeaway from this was that we should not overcomplicate problems when there could be a simple solution, and we should not ignore our creativity. From this experience, I became more confident in myself on my ability to solve problems to improve our user experience.
In week 4, we learned about that failure was nothing to afraid of from the presentation conducted by Mike from EarthSense. Instead, we need to learn from failures and fail early to improve our design from the things we learned from our failures. This was very helpful in our later product design stages. In addition to this, we also how to 3D model on tinkercad. We designed our team logo, turned it into a design model on tinkercad, and 3D printed the model. This was our first of a few experiences of 3D modeling and printing in this course.
In week 5, we learned about the needs of another potential mentor group, Illini Service Dogs. We also learned about the development of 3D printing and its applications in the health industry. We were amazed and inspired by how 3D printing made many unsolved challenges in the health industry possible to solve and how people were inspired by 3D printing to improve the experience in the health industry. We also learned about the fab lab and the tools that are available in the fab lab. I think this week gave me an introduction to the resources available on campus that I did not previously know about. I think this was one of the most useful takeaway coming out from this course – I learned that I could utilize the resources available on campus to do things that fit my interests.
In week 6, we finally had an advanced learning on 3D modeling using FUSION 360, which was another few experiences in class that we actually learned the technical skills.
In week 7-9, we learned the tools available in the fab lab and took our brainstorming of design and prototyping forward. In the fab lab, we learned how to design for laser cutting on Inkscape, how to play with the electronics on the breadboard, and how to input codes on Arduino to make this microcomputer to perform the tasks that we wanted it to perform. Besides the skills that we learned in the fab lab, we also brainstormed ideas about the design of our prototype, made our first low-fidelity prototype, collected user feedback, learned from experts’ recommendations and interviews, adjusted the design of our prototype, and designed our storyboard, which served as a plan of how our users would use the product and how we would market our prototype. We also conducted market research on similar products and how our product would be different and unique so that it could capture the opportunities that exist in the market.
In week 10-11, we spent time in preparing for the Make-a-thon. We met new mentors, spent our time listening to their stories and needs. To be honest, I thought that the time we spent in week 10 was actually a waste of time since the major focus was to introduce mentors to students from another course who are also participating in the Make-a-thon. Although the new mentors had great stories that we could learn new opportunities from the new mentors, we were not able to change our approach since our design focus was on improving Jenna and other amputees’ yoga experience, and she actually hoped to get a functional product out from us to improve her experience in yoga. In week 11, we spent time in meeting with the experts from Milestone Labs, learned about the limitations that our team has and how to improve our design for the product. In this week’s experience, I actually learned about the limitations that I had. I am not a design student, and I was lack of the art skills that I could not make sketches and express my ideas clearly enough, even though I had a picture in mind of what the design would look like. Therefore, we consulted with FUSION 360 experts in making sketches of our prototype and making the 3D model of our prototype.
During this period of time, I also completed my once per semester project on 3D printing’s impact on the food industry. This was something that I was particularly interested in. This was also something that allowed me to learn a lot about the 3D printing technology and the benefits and disadvantages it could bring to our daily lives.
In week 12, prior to the Make-a-thon, we finalized our first 3D model of our prototype and 3D printed a scale version of our prototype. We met our new member who would join us during the Make-a-thon.
In the weekends of week 12, the Make-a-thon started. The Make-a-thon experienced was not bad, but it was not the best too. Entering the Make-a-thon without my two teammates but with a new teammate was a challenge. Not to say that we were not in the same page about our product design due to the fact that our new teammate did not have enough knowledge about our design, we encountered many problems of our original design that we would need to deal with. Both of us did not have enough knowledge of FUSION 360, and we also did not have our mentor. We faced a lot of challenges that would cause us in our progress that we would not able to move forward. Although this experience sounds negative til this point, the experience was actually very positive. I learned to deal with my teammate when we had different ideas. We learned how to compromise, but we also learned to move on first when we got stuck into one challenge that would waste our limited time. We learned how to consult with experts and utilize the experts who are available to us during the Make-a-thon. I would always remember how proud I was when three experts and my teammate were debating over the physics of our design and the problems that we might encounter with the 3D model of our second design. Although debates might not seem positive, this was a sign of failing early so that we were about to fix the failures to improve our design. I would rather experience this in the early stages so that we did not make the failing products due to our lack of knowledge in physics and material science. This was an important lesson that I learned from the Make-a-thon: fail early and make improvements to the design utilizing the feedback and actively consult with the experts so that our design would not be failing due to our lack of knowledge.
The challenge came up also due to the fact that we did not have our mentor, Jenna, during the Make-a-thon to test out our product. This made us went for another approach during the Make-a-thon, which to design a product that could be used not just for prosthetic users so that we could actually test out the functionality without Jenna. After the Make-a-thon, we tested the product with Jenna. The test showed success in concept, but a failure in the actual functionality due to the fact that Jenna’s prosthetic leg was different from the actual human leg, which has muscles that could provide us additional support. The prototype we made during the Make-a-thon could improve the lateral balance but only limited to the portion below her ankle. This made us went back to the original design of a prosthetic replacement for yoga.
In the end, we finally came up with a functional prototype after multiple prototype testing with Jenna followed by multiple iterations to the design. I would say that this course helped me grow in problem-solving skills. I also went through a full stage of human-centered design and product development. With a functional prototype coming out of the course, I am very proud of the work we have done during the short semester in the course. If I could choose the course again, I would definitely do so even if it did not fully meet my original expectations.
I am a student who’s currently studying accountancy and management of information systems. I am graduating this year and entering the MAS program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I love programming and accountancy as much as I love taking photographs and learning how to play the Rubik’s cube. I love trying out new things and learning new skills. Learning how to make accessible designs utilizing digital making skills is one of the new skills I learned.
You must be logged in to post a comment.