Preparation Is Key

THE PLAN.

This week, instead of regular class, we had a Pre-Event for our capstone Make-A-Thon event. At this event, we previewed our schedule for the Make-A-Thon weekend and got to meet some new mentors and participants. All three classes participating in the Make-A-Thon were present (which includes Vishal’s Digital Making class of which I am a part of, Dr. McDonagh’s Accessibility + Design course, and Jeff Ginger’s Makerspace seminar). During the night, we had a panel of wheelchair users talk to us about what people with disabilities really wanted out of the Make-A-Thon – a chance for innovators to learn to use empathetic design, include humanizing language in their vocabulary, and create tools which can help make daily living easier. They are not asking us to solve particular “problems” or find “solutions” to the difficult aspects of their lives, rather they want to take the opportunity to collaboratively innovate with us.

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The panel itself, included Adam Bleakney (one of our mentors and Coach of U of I’s wheelchair racing track team), Isaac (an U of I freshman), John (an U of I sophomore), Ryan Wilson (an U of I alumnus), and Steve (a representative from Clark-Lindsey). Each member of the panel described to us some frustrations they had with their daily living and helped us understand more about the disabilities they had as well as what sort of innovations they have created as a result.

Below is a picture of what all of John’s socks look like. He has attached three loops because his condition means that he has no grip strength in his hands. With the help of the loops, he is able to independently put his socks on via putting his fingers through the loops!

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Additionally, not only did Steve tell us about his own experiences, but he also related to us the experiences of the residents of Clark-Lindsey. Clark-Lindsey is a local retirement community that Steve works at. At Clark-Lindsey, many of the elders have problems such as dementia or pre-Parkinson’s disease which makes some daily living actions difficult, such as walking (and therefore tripping often) or not being able to hold a phone steadily (which makes Facetiming family and grandchildren difficult). Steve talked us through the most common difficulties and proposed that those without a current project help out with some of them. Although I am already working with my team on our attachable treads, one quick idea I had thought of was to use a music stand to help those with trembling hands hold a phone, tablet, or book still for use.

The final part of the Pre-Event had us mingling with the other students as well as the new mentors to create some project ideas. As we already had our own project that we have been working on throughout this semester, my group ended up having a team meeting about the extra research we would need to do in the upcoming days in order to be fully prepared for the Make-A-Thon event. We also talked to a prospective new team member that is a student from Jeff’s Makerspace seminar.

DIGGING AROUND.

Since we did not have a formal workshop class this week as we usually do, I want to also recap some of the other learning that we are doing in class that has not been mentioned before. We have a class forum on a site called Yellowdig where each member of the class can post news articles about the different innovation tools we come across in our lives. This could be extra research on anything we have learned in class that we were particularly interested in or even just articles relating to maker culture and current innovations. In the past week, I have posted a couple interesting articles I have found online. One article was about Odyssey Innovation, a company that makes kayaks out of sea plastic and the other was about Stanford and Apple Watch’s research.

I found these articles interesting for a couple reasons. First, for the article about Odyssey Innovation talked about using a business model as a tool for promoting recycling. While I would like to believe the best of people, the current amount of recycling being done is still not enough – whether this is due to a lack of time, lack or caring, or lack of accessibility. However, if a business model were used, I can see that being enough of a motivator to increase the amount of recycling being done. It is an interesting concept that I think should definitely be explored further by activists.

Next, the Stanford and Apple Watch research was interesting to me in that it is a possible way to make medical information more readily available. While Apple is adamant that their products are not medical grade and therefore cannot give completely accurate results and should not replace doctor’s visits, the application of Apple Watch in sensing irregular heart rates seems to be something that can help discover early indications of heart problems and give users a heads up as to when to visit the doctor. I feel like there could be some really cool applications for the medical field to explore in conjunction with Apple, and I hope that they continue to develop their research.

Finally, one article that my classmate and fellow Solestice teammate, Trevor Sibby, posted was actually about a startup that he is a part of: Nouvo. Nouvo aims to create a smart pacifier that can sense the pH level and temperature of a baby’s saliva in order to help discover problems earlier rather than when symptoms start to show themselves. It is incredibly inspiring to work so closely with someone who is working on technology with such potential.