This past weekend, the teams in our class competed in a make-a-thon that joined 3 courses together and many mentors to make designs focused on accessibility. Unfortunately, I had to be out of town this past weekend, so I did not experience the exciting hustle and bustle in person! However, from Professor Sachdev’s many groupme updates and communicating with my own group throughout the weekend, I was able to find some key takeaways and help our team continue to push forward. I was also able to contribute to our prototype creation before the official start of the Makeathon on Friday evening, as 3D printing can take a lot of time we wanted to start early!
Going into the weekend, I had printed a scaled prototype of a Fusion File that our team had created in class that week. This scaled prototype represents a design that would be a replacement for Jenna’s current prosthetic that she could use for doing yoga specifically. This prototype includes a stable lateral joint but a hinge joint in the frontal plane. We did this because Jenna has told us that her difficulty revolves around the lateral balance, as she has no way to control that without the ability to use her ankle to adjust. It also has a tall rod which would be inserted as her current prosthetic is and a circular base which would increase the surface area and give her even balance in all directions.
Fusion File 
Separated Pieces 
Assembled Pieces
During the Make-a-Thon, our team took another approach. We were introduced to the elderly population during the pre-Makeathon event as a potential user for our product, but understood that a replacement prosthetic would only be applicable to prosthetic users. However, an additive product that would attached to a foot, shoe, or prosthetic base would be able to be used by a wider audience. Our team took this approach throughout the weekend and landed with this very cool design – they did an awesome job!
Base of Additive Design 
Back View Additive Design 
Aerial View Additive Design
Today, my teammate and I were able to meet up with Jenna as she is back from Boston now! We had her try the additive design prototype and got a lot of great feedback. Overall, it is difficult for an additive design to add the stability that Jenna requires in the lateral motion. She did see our fusion file and scaled model of our replacement design as well, and she was very excited about that concept. She thinks it has a very high probability of working. Overall, she had some feedback on that design as well. She said that the hinge for front-back lateral movement would be unnecessary and potentially more unstable, so she would prefer a set 90* angle of base to rod. She also suggested some amount of webbing between the base and the rod to add stability and durability to the design. We are going to make some changes to our Fusion design this week and send them to her to get her feedback and then hopefully print a full scale version by Friday for her to try on!
Hi Samantha,
It’s unfortunate that you could not make it to the Make-a-thon. It was an amazing experience and was impressive to see everyone achieve so much in such a little time. However, it’s cool to see that you continued to work on the design on Fusion, enabling your team to print them out. Are you guys thinking of pursuing after both products or will you be shifting your focus back to solely the device for prosthetic users? I wonder if the two ideas can somehow be combined together?
It is wonderful to see that you and your team are continuing to involve Jenna in the process. With everyone’s schedules and finals coming up, I feel like it’s a challenge just trying to meet with the expert users/mentors and receiving their feedback despite the importance of doing so. I think your final prototype will be phenomenal simply because you and your team continued to involve the user throughout the process. I think user feedback is one of the most valuable assets in building a successful prototype, so I hope it will go well for you!