Category: Summary

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Course Summary

word cloud of student reflections

The third industrial revolution is upon us, and we have the ability to create functional products on our desktop by using some inexpensive and accessible tools. This course was designed to help students get trained on many of these tools and technologies and make things. They explored 3D scanning, modeling and printing to rapidly prototype products. They also had the chance to experiment with open hardware/micro-controllers such as Arduinos and smaller form factors for e-textiles, to explore the concept of the internet of things during the Makeathon. The course also had guest lectures in entrepreneurship, design thinking, digital making and some stories from passionate makers from the community and beyond.

The goal of this course is to bring together students from across campus from several different courses to learn about human centered, empathic solutions for accessible design. With novel ideas and the need to create significant and salient solutions, collaboration is key. The answer does not lie in one domain. Technological tools, corporate spaces and educational environments are being formed to take advantage of the special opportunities inherent only in collaborative work. The three pillars of this course are “learn, make, and share” , and the students embodied these concepts amazingly. Throughout the semester they all learned so much about building and design thinking, made fantastic models and presentations, and continually shared their ideas and growth on the blog.

So much was accomplished this semester, and looking back to January it is amazing to see how far the students have come. This course was an amazing experience, with a variety of guest speakers, tours of different locations on campus, and of course the weekend of the Makeathon.

Over the course of the semester, the class got to learn from the Illini Service Dogs, Adam Bleakney (multiple times), Milestone Studio Labs (who helped us plan the Makeathon as well), Mike Hansen of EarthSense from Research Park, John Hornick – author of 3D Printing will Rock the World, Jeff Ginger – director of the Fablab, Daniel Banach and Jason Roth– Fusion 360 experts, and Valerie from Social Innovation at Illinois. The students also got to visit DRES and the CU Fablab in person! You can see more details about what happened week to week on the updates page.

During all of this the students were working on developing products that addressed a challenge that has not been solved, with a focus on creating products that improve accessibility. They sketched their ideas out, created storyboards, did market research, created many, many models, and interviewed with real users all throughout the process. At the end of the semester, the student teams created a tread that can attach to a prosthetic foot to aid with balance and traction in inclement weather, a leg cover to protect expensive prosthetic pieces, a watch strap that can be put on by users with limited hand strength and movement, a solution for increasing grip on racing wheelchairs during rainy events that can be easily applied, a cover for the joystick on powerchairs to prevent water from getting into expensive componentry, and a yoga foot attachment for prosthetic legs. 

The big event of this semester was the Makeathon, which allowed students to build nice functional prototypes and interact with a larger variety of real world users. It was an amazing event, and you can learn more about it on the Makeathon page!

Here are some things the students had to say about it and they made a video as well.


“The Makeathon exceeded expectations for me and then some. It was riveting to see so many people putting their minds together to solve problems for others than ourselves.”
“The MakeAThon was a long and tiring process but it taught me a few important lessons.”
“Overall this experience was amazing to work with and around such fantastic people that all had a common goal to make the world a better and easier place with their designs.”
“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.”

You can check out more of the students’ thoughts on the blog! Overall, this course is an amazing experience. Students get to have unique opportunities like the Makeathon, learn from amazing people, create fulfilling products, and further expand their education and viewpoint. 

Here are some of the students’ reflections on the course as a whole:
“I ended up learning a lot through this class and I’m thankful for the opportunity to take it.”
“Looking back, I am really glad that I have chosen to take this course. I immersed myself in the designing process and actually came up with something that could have potential impact on people’s life.”
“Overall I have a fantastic time joining this class. I have never been in a class where I have been able to interact and physically design solution for issues that people face every day. One of my favorite things that Professor Vishal said day one was, ‘We are not looking to solve problems, but we are looking to find opportunities’. I thought that this was an amazing way to look at innovation that I had never noticed before.”
“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.”
“I’ve really grown as an individual because of this course.”

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Week 10 Summary: Make-a-thon Pre-Event

The ultimate goal of the Digital Making Seminar course is to create a functioning prototype of whatever it is that each team is working on by the end of the Make-a-thon, taking place from Friday, April 12th, 5:00 pm to Sunday, April 14th, 2:00 pm. What makes this event so exciting is that it not only involves the Digital Making Seminar students but also the students from Dr. Deana McDonagh and Jim Kendall‘s studio class as well as Jeff Ginger‘s Marketspace class. Although the point of the event is to provide the space and resources for the participants to make their ideas come to reality and not to compete against each other, because many external people see the value of what we are doing, we have judges, sponsors, and expert users and mentors to guide us through the progress.

As the date of the event approaches, Dr. Vishal Sachdev, our professor for the course, set up a pre-event, where the participants came together to meet each other as well as some of the mentors and expert users. The pre-event began with the introduction of the make-a-thon with details regarding the schedule and the resources that we would have access to. From the Fablab to Architecture Annex on campus, we are fortunate to have been provided with access to many resources. We are all very excited to utilize the resources to develop on the ideas that we have worked on so far throughout the semester.

While sharing the details of the event, Dr. Sachdev, as well as Dr. McDonagh, reemphasized that the purpose of the event is to design with the expert users and mentors in different opportunities that have been identified. We are not solving any problems or challenges. It is critical for the participants to remember this as we want to constantly keep the users in our mind while constructing prototypes and receive feedback by working with them.

After going through the details of the event, we were introduced to a few of our mentors and expert users as well as new ones. Each one of them took the time to introduce themselves, sharing their stories to inspire us.

John and Isaiah, two of the new expert users that have been introduced, shared how they adapted to the struggles that they faced. For example, John, whose condition does not allow him to have enough grip strengths to use his fingers to pull apart a sock to put over his foot, kindly demonstrated the solution that he found for it.

John’s sock which has been modified to fit his need.

As pictured above, with help from his mother, he simply had three loops sewed around the neck of the sock, allowing him to insert his fingers through them and to tug on them. This simple, yet brilliant idea inspired many of us, encouraging us to think of simple ideas and to look for inspiration from the daily objects. We realized that by doing that, we will be able to come up with things that many users would have access to and find easy to use.

Steve, a representative of Clark-Lindsey, also shared the stories of the residents and their needs in the local retirement community. From the challenges of holding the phones to video chat with the family to the danger of falling due to dementia and pre-Parkinson’s disease, he shared how we can leave a big impact on many different types of users through this event. This sharing inspired some groups, such as the team that is working on developing a product to help the people with prosthetic legs to improve the balance to do yoga, to think of ways to expand the user base.

Afterward, we were provided with opportunities to talk with the expert users and mentors to ask questions and to receive feedback on the ideas that we have been developing throughout the semester. Some teams were also able to talk with students from other classes to see if any of them would be interested in joining the team.

As we continue towards the make-a-thon, most of the teams are moving into the prototyping phase. So far, we came up with many different ideas and developed on them, constantly receiving feedback from the expert users. However, we understand that there will be different challenges that will arise when we try to make the ideas tangible, which is why prototyping is important. From low fidelity prototypes to 3D designing through Fusion360 and printing the product, we will be experimenting with different ways to develop the prototypes. We are all very excited to continue to work on our ideas and look forward to presenting them during the make-a-thon!