Walking the same path I’ve anxiously trudged many a time before, I felt a little bit disappointed. I had signed up for this digital making course to learn new things and find ways to stay curious in my field. Yet, everything we had done so far was so familiar to me: the slight sweat building up from the far walk to the DRES testing center, the awkward stillness of its lobby, and quickly redirected glances to avoid eye contact with the strangers you’ve been thrown together with in the class; all of this was familiar. What was unfamiliar was our descent from the first floor to the wheelchair sports training room and the brief retelling of the history of wheelchair sports told to us by our mentor, Adam. What was unfamiliar was learning about how someone who had taken the same class as us mere years ago now had a multinational company whose product had made a significant impact on sports technology. It was incredible learning each individual mentor’s story and the way they made the most out of what they had, using existing technology in unique ways to not just make a profit, but make an impact. Hearing about Jenna and Ron’s struggle to become an athlete, I couldn’t help but relate to the yearning they experienced, having had to stop my own sport, track, due to chronic shin splints.
This is all to say that the whole experience of interviewing experts with experience in disability related products was an especially empathetic and inspiring experience for me. Throughout the course of the interviews, their emphasis on affordability and accessibility inspired many ideas in me to help solve not only problems they brought up about physical disabilities but also problems that my friends and I – who have mental disabilities – experience daily. Given the stigma against such disabilities, the budget constraints of helpful projects tend to be lacking; what really sparked my brain in the interview was all the ways that the experts we talked to innovated creatively through utilizing existing objects and ideas to create solutions to completely unrelated problems. As a business major interested in consulting, this emphasis in cost effective innovative solutions is a particularly interesting mentality that I will carry with me into future problem-solving situations. I had been thinking of innovation in terms of creating new things completely from scratch, but moving forward, I will be keeping the ideal of adapting old inventions to newer and more modern, salient products.
Salutations! I’m a sophomore studying accountancy who likes to create some art on the side (yes, I’m one of those photographer/poet/all around artist people). My passion is in advocating for equity, and I probably spend a little too much time on Hulu.
I am a part of Team Solestice with Trevor Sibby and Emma Bradford.
Hi AJ! I really enjoyed how you described the journey of visiting DRES especially the very real part of “quickly redirected glances to avoid eye contact with the strangers” hahah. But I can relate to feeling inspired by the idea to work with what already exists to use in something that seems unrelated.
Hi AJ,
I also had a very similar experience with you regarding the discovery of the new meaning of innovation. For me personally, I thought of innovation as something completely new that influences many people. From the conversations with the mentors, however, I realized that innovation does not mean that it has to be completely new. It can be making an improvement on something pre-existing, but simply done in a different way. I think such a perspective on innovation really opens up a lot of doors to possibilities.
Hi AJ, I agree with many points you have discussed. Previous to the interaction with our mentors, I thought the improvement on design would be making it more user-friendly. However, as I talked with mentors and heard their opinions, I realized affordability and accessibility played a huge role in people’s ability to adopt the products or services. This gave me another angle to look at the issues. If we could find some way to make the design more affordable to people or more accessible to people, that would have huge impacts. Besides 3D printing that we are going to learn in class, I brainstorm about other possible technology we can embrace to lower the cost or increase the accessibility. I find one article from Bain & Company website that illustrates the rapid growth of cloud services (https://www.bain.com/insights/how-technology-incumbents-can-realize-their-cloud-growth-ambitions/). I think this might be an idea that we can consider later. I was also inspired to hear how they use existing objects to solve problems creatively. As a person who wants to enter the consulting field, I think this is a mindset that I should always keep in mind.
Hi AJ!
This post was a very relatable read, especially when speaking of many classes seeming familiar and repetitive. It seems we have all taken a step in the right direction to find a class that is not only different, but also impactful. When you speak of utilizing old objects or products in a new way, I can only think of Ron and his resourcefulness. He managed to create a lifestyle that was the same as his life before the injury, he just completed his tasks in a different manner, utilizing tools in unconventional ways.