Though we faced freezing weather that blocked the class from meeting in person, it did not stop us from continuing to explore the inspirations that we encountered the past week. With the representatives of the Milestone Studio Labs on a video conference with the class, we continued to brainstorm as a team regarding several ideas that we thought would improve someone else’s quality of life. From the stories that our mentors shared, we realized the significance of affordability and accessibility, which is why we decided that those two factors will be the center of our design. Whatever it was that we were designing, we wanted to ensure that it would be accessible to the people who we were designing for.
With that in mind, my team and I came up with three ideas that we possibly would want to explore further throughout the semester:
- Snow/sand tracks for wheelchairs
- DIY wheelchair
- Shock-absorbing wheelchair
These ideas were inspired by the mentors and the stories that they shared last week. Although with their experience and knowledge, they are able to find ways to get around these problems, we wanted to make the process easier for them. As our professor emphasized, we were not trying to solve their problems. We wanted to help with improving the process and making it easier.
When we shared these ideas with the representatives of Milestone Studio Labs, they were very supportive, providing constructive feedbacks that raised our confidence. However, what I found to be even more helpful came after that. They pushed us, as a team, to identify an opportunity that we wanted to explore and design for. That is when I realized that without having a clear goal, the opportunity that we are pursuing after, we would not be able to design an effective product. I was ready to jump into designing a product when we haven’t even defined clearly the opportunity that we were hoping to address with the idea.
To identify an opportunity that we wanted to explore as a team, we went back to our core factors: accessibility and affordability. That is ultimately what we really wanted to provide for the people in need of a wheelchair. For this reason, we decided to explore the DIY wheelchair idea further. We wanted the users to be able to customize and replace the parts of a wheelchair as necessary. However, we also recognize the challenge with this idea. With the time and resources allotted to us, we probably will not be able to create a whole DIY wheelchair, which is why we are looking to begin with a part of a wheelchair that commonly requires a replacement. To identify such a part, we will need to do more research and talk with our mentors to gain an understanding, but now that we have the opportunity that we want to explore clearly defined, I am looking forward to where the design will lead to.
Hi Matthew! I agree with you and your team that the idea of an IKEA -like DIY wheelchair seems to be a great fit for the themes of affordability and accessibility. I have a few suggestions on how you can find more information for which part to focus on during this semester. You can probably start by reaching out to wheelchair users beyond our mentors to see which parts tend to get worn out the most for wheelchair users of different activity levels and lifestyles. Additionally, I think it would be really cool if your team could apply some sort of aesthetic element to whatever part you decide to focus on. From my own background knowledge, I know that with products related to accessibility, the market doesn’t tend to have many options for different aesthetic/style choices, so I know that it would most likely garner more interest in wheelchair users if you add that aesthetic element.