Did we Evinco? e-portfoilo​ by Maryam

To explain the title, Evinco is the latin word for prevail or overcome. (“Did we prevail?”) However, it is also the word that my team chose to represent our project this semester. We worked with Arielle Rausin as our mentor and tried to overcome challenges in Paralympic wheelchair racing.

At the beginning of this course, I expected to focus a lot more on 3D printing. My group was very worried because we weren’t sure how we would 3D print something that related to our project idea and goals. Our goal was to improve an athlete’s grip during undesirable weather conditions. However, besides the practice with Fusion 360 we did very little 3D printing in this class. The experience was also different because we were assigned mentors. I think personally, I expected to be able to design a product myself or with a team. However, after we were presented mentors it really focused our efforts. I think this was a good thing because we were able to make an impact. However, it also was very hard in the beginning because we really had to understand the experience of the mentors and work on an empathetic design approach.

I think I learned a lot about myself this semester. When I entered the class I greatly doubted my design capabilities. However, I quickly realized that I actually have valuable design experience from my T&M classes! I already knew what a design brainstorm was and was able to use my imagination to think outside the box. Also, I was able to learn more about empathetic design. I know Professor Deanna was talking about a class she leads in empathetic design and how she has her students put on blindfolds and use walking canes for a day. I thought this was really interesting and I wish I could have taken a class about empathetic design in college.

I don’t know where to begin when recapping everything I learned over the semester! My first post was about our class visit to DRES. This was when I first met my mentor for the semester Arielle and learned about her previous experience in the same class. I also learned about her company, Ingenium which was the basis and the inspiration for our class! https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-2-reflection-2/

Week 3 was when we first started learning about design thinking and had an introduction from milestone labs. One of my big takeaways was a design can almost always be improved. Milestone did a great job of pointing out how people come up with design hacks daily and just because these hacks work, it doesn’t mean they are necessarily the best version. https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-3-reflection/

During Week 4 I learned a lot for my project. We create our team name, logo and used Arielle’s company Ingenium as our inspiration. However, we also went to DRES to visit the team during one of their practices. Here are some of my notes that were key learnings for my team. “The first thing that was helpful to learn was that the hand ring is re-gripped about every 3 months. The ring is unscrewed from the wheel and a tire tubing is placed around the ring. Contact cement is used to attach the tubing and it is heat activated for a heat gun has to be used to pull the tubing off. It is about a 4-hour process to change the grip and it has to dry for a day. Elisa asked if there was a company that changed the grips and we were all shocked to find that there was none. All the athletes have to learn to change the grip themselves and some of them will even pay their other team members to do it for them.” https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-4-evinco/

Week 5 was our first project brainstorming session. I remember Adam attended our class that day and our team got a little off topic because Adam was so excited about our project! He had all these amazing ideas and we are so appreciative that he shared them with our team! https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/evinco-week-5-applications-of-3d-printing/(opens in a new tab)

Week 6 is when we started learning about 3D printing and got the opportunity to try our Fusion 360. This was one of my favorite weeks because this related to my overall expectations for the class and my desire to learn technical skills. https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-6-team-envinco-fusion/

Week 7, 8 and 9 were spent at the Fab Lab. We spent time getting trained on the different tools and had the opportunity to build a watch that was meant for users who need physical therapy on their hands or wrist. You can see the steps we took in the three posts below. https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/a-lab-that-is-truly-fabulous/

https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-8-sewing-pros/(opens in a new tab)

https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-9-watch-what-we-can-do/(opens in a new tab)

Week 10 for me was the least productive. I had to miss our class session for my Supply Chain class. However, our team did do some research on what was currently in the market. This ended up not being super successful because there were no products related to wheelchair racing in the market and we looked at normal wheelchairs. https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-10-making-moves/(opens in a new tab)

Week 11 was preparations leading up to the makeathon and week 12 was the makeathon. These are the weeks where I learned the most in this class. Leading up to the makeathon we researched materials and met with a material science professor. We gained super valuable information for our project and I wish we had more time to do actual reserach and preparations because then our team would have been able to order a more specific material. https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/week-11-pre-make-a-thon/

https://digitalmaking.web.illinois.edu/spring2019/make-a-thon-success/(opens in a new tab)