After one week of spring break, the class reassembled on the following Tuesday night to kick-off the Make-a-Thon event happening next week. Unfortunately, I have class during that time every week, so I was not able to attend the event. However, that does not mean that I simply let the week go to waste as I continued to brainstorm on our project.
My twin brother studies art in New York and is an enthusiast of comic book and Japanese manga. During a recent chat with him, I notice that many of the action figures cannot stand by itself as the makeup of the figures has weight emphasized in other areas which make the figures impossible to stand on its own. To overcome this issue, many of the figures either come with a stand or a foot peg to not only increase the surface area but help with the support.
I think that this idea can be apply to our design as we are looking to help prosthetics yoga enthusiast with support especially during frontal plane positions. I have yet to pitch this idea to my team and I cannot wait to hear about their feedback.
Unfortunately, due to a class conflict I was unable to attend the pre-Makethon meeting. In the meantime, I have planned meetings with two different professors who are well accomplished in their areas.
First, a week or so back, my teammate, Maryam and I met with Deanna McDonagh, professor of Art and Design. She was thrilled to view our project ideas and progress and offered a great deal of support to our cause. Her ideation process was incredibly interesting as she had a large amount of ideas that seemed outlandish. Although some of these brainstormed ideas seemed impossible, it did she had no doubt in the possibilities. When speaking further about these beyond creative concepts, Deanna made the point that everything we have today was once considered impossible. Cars that drive themselves, men on the moon, phones that can access any amount of information in seconds were all just ideas that were once scoffed at. Some of the less feasible suggestions that we came up with during our meeting were biodegradable handrail covers that would grow flowers where they were left. Although something like this may seem ridiculous, the exercise helped us really grasp the possibilities that we may be capable of by the end of the year. On the other hand, the most firm idea that we had presented to Deanna was a removable handrail that could be snapped into the aluminum wheel much more easily.
After discussing our project deeper, we decided our next step was to find the proper material with which we will create our product. In order to find the best material, we have decided to meet with Professor Goodman, a materials science professor in engineering. I took a class with him my junior year as a part of the Technology and management program. My group will meet with him this upcoming Friday and hopefully will be able to move forward after this.
This week, we have moved from the ideation stage and have started our focus on rapid prototyping. Instead of having our regular Wednesday morning class, we had our session on Tuesday evening. Due to conflict with my other course, I was unable to attend the session myself. However, I got updates from friends and teammates about the process and things we covered in the session. The session itself focused on preparing for Makeathon, the event that we are going to participate in a couple of weeks, and we were introduced to resources and opportunities about that event.
The whole session was taken with Dr. McDonagh’s Industrial Design class and Jeff’s Fab Lab class, so our class was able to brainstorm and share ideas with more people. We were also introduced to resources such as the Fab Lab, Makerlab, and Architecture lab; when the Makeathon takes place in the future, we are going to have the opportunities to use resources from those facilities. Furthermore, many old and new mentors came to share their ideas and stories in the class and provided new perspectives to us.
To our group, our focus has been on inventing a glove that could help users grab things easier. We intended it to be applicable for people with limited mobility and not enough arm strength. We hoped the users would be able to overcome the obstacle of not able to eat independently; through using our design, the users could enjoy the food with their friends and families without the help of other people. In the session, our group was introduced to the motion of using the knife and fork. This was something that we didn’t consider before. Previously, we focused on the environment that the users would be in when they used the product. We thought about the configuration of the meal setting including how the utensils were placed nearby the users so that it would be easy for them to start using them. We considered the texture of the glove as well so that the glove would be able to accomplish the task that we wanted it to be able to do. However, we didn’t specifically consider the different types of utensils that the users were going to interact with. We didn’t consider how the features of the utensils would influence the interactions, and how we should design the glove in a way that it could accommodate different types of utensils. In the following weeks, we are going to take this factor into consideration, and build a glove that could be more user-friendly.
I am Huan Wu, a leadership-oriented undergraduate student studying Accountancy, Supply Chain Management and Information Systems/Information Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I chose to major in those areas because I am a person who likes to learn new knowledge continuously and take on challenges. The challenges bring me excitement, as I enjoy the feeling of using my expertise to tackle hard issues, find insights and initiate change. I believe having an understanding of different fields allows me to have a broader perspective when I look at issues in business. I aim at improving myself and learning skills to initiate change and make real impacts in the world in the future.
My LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huan-wu-0507/
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 withthe 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!
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.
This week was a little different from most. Sadly, I wasn’t able to attend class due to our meeting time changing for a Pre Make-A-Thon Session. From reading my other classmates posts and knowing what we did in class it seemed incredibly beneficial. I was unable to attend due to a time conflict with my other class. I attached some photos here of the sessions that some of my classmates added to the forum already.
Movi Project Update
After coming back from spring break it was great that Professor Vishal assigned us an assignment that could put our team back on track. This week our group met up in the Business Instructional Facility to discuss our testing protocols for our project. Our group went very in-depth on how we should go about testing our product. It was really great to discuss with both Jay and Nathan about this because moving into Make-A-Thon next weekend we need to understand how and why we need to test our product. I think our entire group is really excited to get into Make-A-Thon to start creating and making our project a reality. With the major number of mentors there to help us with ideas and testing, I’m excited to get our feet on the ground and start MOVIng.
My name is Ryan Kane, and I am a senior graduating in the spring of 2019 from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Gies College of Business. I have a double major is both Supply Chain Management and Information Systems and Information Technology.
This week I had class during our changed class session. I was upset to miss the lead up to the make-a-thon but I expect my team members recruited great students to help us during the event.
As an update on our project, my team is working with Arielle to help improve an athlete’s grip during bad weather conditions. We have different ideas to modify the glove or modify the ring itself. However, we are not sure which of these ideas is the most feasible. Part of what we are still trying to figure out is what material would be best for our product. We also did research before spring break to understand current solutions in the market.
In order to better understand materials, we have reached out to Dr. Goodman who is a Material Science Engineering Professor. For our Technology & Management minor, we took a basic introduction to material science engineering. Dr. Goodman was our Professor and we believe he would have very valuable input for this project. Nathan emailed him on behalf of my team and his team. We are trying to schedule a meeting for next week.
For current market solutions, this was a little difficult for our group to come up with. That is because the current solution is what Arielle told us about – everything is manual and grips need to be replaced around every 3 weeks. Therefore, we research everyday wheelchairs and tried to understand what makes them work well in the rain. We assumed that grip problems would also occur in everyday wheelchairs and we were correct.
This article was really helpful and mentioned a variety of different wheelchairs that are good in the rain. One specific one I want to highlight is the Spinergy FlexRim.
Here is a picture of the spinergy flexrim wheelchair.
This chair uses a urethane material to secure the pushrim and it provides extra traction. The flex strip provides more traction and helps users with carpel tunnel and tennis elbow! Hopefully, with the help of Dr. Goodman we can see if we can apply this technique to racing wheelchairs also.
This week, we had our first pre-Makeathon class. There was Dr. McDonagh’s art and design students and Maker lab’s students who were also participating in this event. We discussed about when and how this event was going to happen. I’ve heard about Hackathons in our school. However, I never heard about this event called the Makeathon and I am very honored to have the chance to participate in one.
Other people from the DRES came over to help us brainstorm our ideas. Since our team MOVI had a set idea, we tried to expand on how we might improve our ideas. We talked to one of the wheel chair users named Isaiah. He was very cool talking about his experience as a wheel chair user and having hand tremors at the same time. I told him that we were trying to make a knee protection for everyone even for people with hand tremors. When he saw our previous prototypes, he asked if we could make the connection part out of zippers. For people with weak hand strength, it is very hard to utilize items that require grip. Especially garments using Velcro or button-ups are the worst, so they try to stay away from those products. I think this strengthen our prototype and it expanded our user group as well.
John was another wheel chair user with hand tremor who came over to the conference to help us out. He gave us a very compelling story of his special sock, customized by his mother. The sock had two holes on each sides, so John can insert his finger through the hole and them pull his foot. This also gave us the idea of making the zipper hole very big so, people with hand tremors can easily use this circle attachment to put the knee protection on.
Further on, our team will talk with Jenna and Jeannette this week, and study how they fall. We have already came up with some great questions through our “testing protocol” exercise. By watching Jenna and Jeannette fall, we can deduct which part of the protection needs more pad. I think we were very successful during this week and I am looking forward to our talk with our users.
Instead of meeting at our regular class time this week, we met Tuesday night to prepare for the Makeathon that is coming up in a couple of weeks. We meet new mentors and other students who are also participating in the Makeathon.
Two of our class mentors, Adam and Ryan, along with three new mentors sharing their stories with us.
One story that I was intrigued by was from one of the mentors who has been using a wheelchair since he was about ten. He doesn’t have a high level of mobility in his hands and fingers, so he saw an opportunity to make it easier to put his socks on. He bought fabric from Jo-Ann Fabrics and had his mother sew three loops onto the socks. This allows him to firmly grip the sock, bend over, and pull the sock over his foot. I thought this innovation was very creative, as I would not have thought of it myself. Moreover, I could see this sock innovation expanded to multiple different user bases, such as elderly people.
Another mentor who spoke at the pre-night was a representative from Clark-Lindsey, a retirement community in Urbana, IL. He shared with us three different personas of residents at Clark-Lindsey, which helped us empathize with the residents and understand their everyday lives and emotions. From this, the mentor shared that one large opportunity for the Makeathon is fall prevention. One great aspect of a fall prevention product is that it could be expanded to user bases outside of the elderly, and that is a huge goal for the Makeathon.
Mentor from Clark-Lindsey sharing the resident personas.
The last part of the class was designated to brainstorming with our teams and speaking with mentors. My team, Solestice, met a student from the MakerSpace class, and thought she would be a great addition to our team. She has more experience utilizing the tools that will be available during the Makeathon, so she will add great value and insight. I am looking forward to participate in the Makeathon in a couple of weeks!
Hi there! I am a Senior studying Marketing and Information Systems/Information Technology. I chose to take this course in order to expand my creative and design thinking skills that I can apply to my future career. I am grateful that we are provided the opportunity to take this course as Business majors.
This week was much different than most other classes. Instead of having our typical 9AM Wednesday class, we had a combined Tuesday evening class with Dr. McDonagh’s Industrial Design class and Jeff’s Fab Lab class. The main purpose of the class was to brief all the students about the upcoming Make-A-Thon and introduce more potential mentors. We learned that the Make-A-Thon would be spaced out throughout an entire weekend and that there would be lots of resources available to us. The Fab Lab, Makerlab, and Architecture lab were all kind enough to offer their facilities to us throughout the entire weekend and professionals and students will be volunteering their time to help us use these machines properly. We also learned that there would be prizes for the winners. While this is a nice bonus, the real incentive is making a product that our awesome mentor Jenna will be excited to use!
More Mentors
The class also introduced us to more mentors. While our Makerlab class already has partnered with mentors, meeting these new mentors was very helpful for the Industrial Design students. Most of the new mentors are from DRES and they shared stories about their experiences and examples of ways they have worked to develop solutions to everyday tasks. One student shared that he sewed on loops to his socks so that he could still put them on even though he has trouble fully closing his fingers to grab things. I though his solution was genius and a perfect example of the types of solutions we are trying to come up with in class. A representative from Clark-Lindsey, a retirement community, also came in to talk about some of the struggles that the elders in their community face. Our group was able to talk with him after the presentation and he told us about a really cool device that has an accelerometer that could tell when a user was falling and inflate a mini airbag to protect the hip. We began to brainstorm how we could use a similar advice to protect Jenna’s leg during a fall.
Team Movi Update
This week our team met up to discuss test protocols for our prototype testing. We now have a much better idea of how we miss measure success for our prototype. In addition, we are also scheduling a meeting with a material science professor on campus to learn what materials would be best to use for our device.
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