Our time at the FabLab has been focused on making a cheap, interactive watch face that helps doctors measure whether outpatients have been completing their proper outpatient physical therapy sessions. Last week, I learned how to build the electronic circuit in the watch face. This week, it was our class section’s turn to learn how to laser print the watch face and sew the watch strap. After learning these tools, we met with Milestone Labs to receive feedback on our prototypes and then worked with Jenna to begin to design the second iteration of our prototypes.
Learning InkScape
Our first lesson was on the laser printing and etching software InkScape. We learned that InkScape has many different capabilities and we were able to play around with designing shapes and importing silhouettes from the internet. After we gained som familiarity with the tool, we were tasked with desiging an easy to use watch interface that would help user differentiate between the settings for both the “curl” and “twist” exercises. For my design, I decided to orient different arrows to show which way the watch face should be facing to correctly monitor each different exercize.
Sewing Refresher
The next portion of our class was focused on learning how to sew. When I was little my grandmother had taught me how to sew, but that was such a long time ago that I needed a refresher on how to work the machine. However, after a short tutorial, I was able to get up to speed and feel confident in my sewing abilities. One of my biggest takeaways was the improtance of backstitching. Backstitching is when you stitch backwards at the start of your stitch to reinforce the line so it doesn’t unravel overtime. At first, I made this mistake and needed to go back over my original stitch. Once we felt comfortable sewing we were given the assignment to make a watch strap. The watch strap had many steps, but are instructor Duncan did a great job leading our class through them and we all came out with acceptable watch straps by the end of class.
Initial Sewing Exercise 
Fab Lab Sewing Machine
Milestone Midpoint
In our next portion of the class, my team met with representatives from Milestone Labs to discuss our progress so far. The designers at Milestone Labs were happy with our current progress but challenged us to get more user interviews from a wider variety of sources. They recommended interviewing veterans and elderly users and we have worked on contacting different users from these designations this week. They were also impressed with the prototypes we had made and gave a few suggestions, such as th BOA strap, on ways to improve our designs.
Testing and Iterating
Our next step was to meet with our mentor Jenna to test out the prototypes we had created on her prosthetic leg. After testing our prototypes, Jenna told us that while she liked the basic concept of our sleeve design, it would not work because the fabric might interfere with the walking mechanism at the back of her knee. This was an important discovery because it meant that we had to alter all of our prototypes to stay away from the back of the knee. To me, this was a big learning moment that reinforced the importance of prototype iterations and user-centered design. While our original prototype was good in theory it would have failed to meet Jenna’s specifications because we had overlooked an important aspect of its usability. After our talk with Jenna, our team brainstormed and came up with a new prototype idea that hooked on to the top of the knee and the back of her calf. We will work on prototyping this new design and get ready to show it to Jenna again this week!
Jenna tests our prototype 
Sketch of the available surface to attach the cover 
Fab Lab design that inspired our new prototype 
An idea for our second round of prototyping
I am a Senior majoring in Finance with a minor in the Hoeft Technology & Management Program.
Hi Nathan,
Those are really cool prototypes that you and your team came up with so far! It’s always nice to see how passionate your team is with the project and the progress you guys make each week. It works as a motivation for me to keep working on the project and to push the team to make progress.
To my understanding, your group is working on a protective sleeve/cover for prosthetic legs, correct? I’m curious to know, have your team considered what kind of materials to use to create the protective cover? I’m just wondering that since the point of your product is to protect the legs, meaning that they need to somehow have shock-absorbing abilities, and I think this ability will depend greatly on the materials used. I recommend looking into a variety of products, such as helmets, elbow/knee pads, industrial gloves, insoles, to perhaps even phone cases to explore different materials that are used for shock-absorbing purposes.
Hi Nathan! After returning to the Fab Lab, I had a great time learning how to use circuits, but I also wish I would have the opportunity to learn how to sew. Hopefully, we will be able to do this when we return for the upcoming class. Also, it sounds like you have made great progress on your prosthetic cover for Jenna! your prototypes look great and I look forward to seeing how it turns out!
Hey! I think it’s awesome that you were able to learn how to work the sewing machines and I think you took away an important takeaway of back-stitching. It is also super cool that your team was able to make a few prototypes and actually test is on your user. I think design is a very iterative process and it is essential to keep the user in the loop while you’re in the process of designing. It may also help to do a 3d scan of her knee with an ipad if possible so you can have her dimensions saved