Coming into this course, I didn’t really know what to expect. I heard about it in Dr. McDonagh’s Disability + Relevant design course. Since I really enjoyed that class, I thought I might enjoy this one as well. I had heard about Arielle’s company Ingenium in that course, and was very impressed to hear that the product she sells was first created in Digital Making. That really sparked my interest in the class even further.
When the semester began, I expected the class to focus a lot on 3D printing. I was surprised to find out that it was going to be set up more like the kind of studio class I am familiar with. This got me excited because I was eager to experience a design course from a more outside realm. We spent a lot of time in class doing brainstorms, research, and iterations, much like my design courses. But what was new for me about this course was having an opportunity to work with business students. It was fun to teach them what I know about design and introduce them to the importance and relevance of design thinking.
After having the chance to visit DRES early in the semester really sparked my interest in working with the wheelchair track team. We also had the chance to meet the mentors and meet Arielle. It was cool to hear her talk about her story and have the chance to see someone, and not necessarily even a designer, create a product and then profit from its creation is just so exciting for me to see. She really found an area that needed improvement, no matter the scale, and took off with it. This really got me as well as my team excited about working with her.
After deciding we wanted to work with Arielle, we got the chance to meet up with her and discuss the opportunities further. She told us about the struggles the team faces with their hand rings. She told us how during poor weather conditions, racing becomes even more difficult as you no longer have a good grip on the hand rings of the chair. We were lucky to be invited to visit the team practice and get a chance to have a closer look at the chairs, the hand rings, the gloves, and the process that goes into preparing your chair for a race. Wrapping the hand ring is such a difficult and time consuming task, we knew it would be so great to find a way to streamline that process into something more efficient and easier to do.
During the following weeks, we begun to really think about how we might find a good solution for our opportunity. We begun to discuss what materials we might want to test with our prototype. We decided to test how adding snaps to the existing hand ring, as well as to our materials will hold up. We also wanted to test various materials around the ring to hopefully find one that creates the best friction.
For the Makeathon, we purchased a variety of materials including a bath mat and a yoga mat. During the Makeathon, we quickly realized that our materials were very soft and didn’t withstand even minimal testing with the glove. We found that our most promising solution was to pursue to Plasti Dip. We discovered that there was a spray version available, which seemed to be a good and easy option. After the Makeathon, we purchased a can of the spray Plasti Dip to create another prototype. We used the spray booth in Art + Design to coat the hand rings and the gloves. The spray was so easy to use. We did the recommended three coats, waiting 30 minutes between each and four hours for it to dry. After it had dried, it had created a nice even coat that was slightly sticky to the touch.
We met with Joey Gibbs from the racing team to test the prototype. Once we arrived at the DRES morning practice, Joey was able to remove one of the hand rings from his chair and attach our prototype to it. The glove we had sprayed was not Joey’s size, so he wants able to test the glove with the ring. However, we did see Jenna, another racer and mentor from our class, and she was able to test the glove for us. After going about 40 feet, the Plasti Dip on the glove started peeling away immediately. We quickly realized this was not a solution.
Once Joey was ready to start practicing using our prototype, he quickly realized that the Plasti Dip created the perfect amount of friction between his glove and the ring. It was sticky enough to create a good grip, but not too sticky that it slowed down his stroke. After about five minutes of Joey practicing at a regular speed, we could see that the rubber spray coating was starting to peel away. Even though it was peeling away, it didn’t affect Joey’s speed or efficiency. After about 15 minutes, the rubber on the ring was almost worn away. We noticed that one section of the ring, however, was withstanding Joey’s strokes. Once we took a closer look at the ring, we realized the part that was no peeling was the part that we had coated with Plasti Dip at the Makeathon. This lead us to believe that our potential solution might be stronger if both types of Plasti Dip are used or if more coats are applied. In the end, Joey had found that his overall speed was actually 1 mph faster with our prototype than normal. This was an exciting finding! We think that if the team pursues trying this material in various ways, they might find a solution that is easier and more effective.
This class was a great learning experience. Though it was different than what I had expected in terms of what we actually did during the class, I still enjoyed it. The best part for me was having the chance to work with business students and learn more about their point of view when it comes to problem solving and design. I learned that I have better problem solving skills than I thought, which was an exciting self discovery.
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