Learning from the “Firsts”

For me, this week involved a lot of the “firsts.” It was my first time using the Fusion 360 to design and print out an object, first time interviewing an expert user for the project, and my first time not feeling lost about the direction of the project that the team was taking. With the advancements that we have made this week, I feel more confident that we will be able to provide a tangible product that will help our intended users by the end of the project timeline.

Autodesk 360

This week, one of our focus was on learning how to use the Autodesk Fusion 360. As someone who was hoping to learn about 3D designing software such as AutoCAD and be able to create an object through it, this was an exciting topic. In fact, I was so mesmerized by the shapes that were taking form on my screen while doing the first assignment that I forgot that it was to complete up to part one of the videos. Instead, I ended up completing all three videos to create a final product in one sitting even though it took me several hours.

Although it was fun and I enjoyed the process of creating a product on Fusion 360, there were many frustrating moments throughout the assignment. While trying to interact with the interface, I found out how difficult it is to select a very specific area or a part of an object created. Sometimes, it seems like you clicked the correct side or a part of an object but when viewed from a different angle and zoomed in, that may not be the case. It also frustrated me that there were so many lags with the interface. Many of the times when I tried to change the perspective of the view, the interface would lag, testing my patience. Regardless, I am very satisfied with the result and proud of how much I taught myself going through this one assignment.

The practice with Fusion 360 continued in class with Dan Banach from Autodesk leading the workshop. I was extremely happy to find how easy it was to follow him since I already dedicated a lot of time learning the interface. I am usually afraid of using such technical software since I feel that I am slow with technology but this time, I am looking forward to continuing to hone my skill and see where this leads to.

Interviewing Ryan

This week, our team finally had an opportunity to interview an expert user of a wheelchair. We were privileged to interview Ryan, one of the mentors for the course. With our goal of creating something that will improve the experience of youth wheelchair users, we began to ask him for his stories, especially focusing on his past. He was extremely nice and opened up to us quickly, sharing his stories and emotions that he felt being a wheelchair user since he was young. While sharing the stories, he shared one particular problem that he continues to face as a user of an automated wheelchair: rain getting into the joystick of his chair, leading to a power outage.

With further discussion, we came to the conclusion that it is better for us to focus on something very specific like Ryan’s challenge, rather than something broad like the one that we have been planning on addressing. Although Ryan liked our original idea, he guided us to a different path since we were under a time constraint. Therefore, we will continue to focus on this particular challenge and address it. We also realized that by pursuing this opportunity, we will be able to utilize the technical skills that we are obtaining in class and provide a tangible product by the end, whereas for the other topic, we weren’t sure how that would happen.

Now that our path of the project is a little more clear, we are planning on returning to our plans and activities that we have done in class to modify and adjust accordingly. Although I have always been nervous that our team was behind and unclear about our destination, I now feel much more confident that we will be able to achieve something that will be of help to users like Ryan by the end of the project. This experience confirmed the importance of working with mentors and understanding the perspectives of the users, so we are hoping to set up more interviews with not only Ryan again, but with other users of wheelchairs also. With the new topic in our mind, we have already started visioning what our product would look like, and we are looking forward to where it will lead to!