Tag: #assisitivedevices

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Week 11!

This week was the final stretch before the week of the Make-a-thon. Class began with Professor Vishal clearing up everything regarding the Make-a-thon. The expectation and resources available during this event were explained. Once Vishal finished up we were given a presentation from social innovation representative Valerie. Valerie introduced to the class an opportunity to continue furthering their innovative ventures, while receiving non dilutive funding. This opportunity is provided by a program called the iVenture Accelerator. Which is a startup incubator. It’s a 10 week summer commitment and a full academic year seminar course. Participants receive $10,000 of funding and stipends throughout the summer. They not only provide this funding but have a pool of resources ranging from experts to additional funding opportunities. I am actually apart of the iVenture Accelerator. They really dive deep and help further your idea. They’ve introduced us to so many useful/helpful people. It’s really like a family. They bring you along and you become apart of this amazing ecosystem.

After Valerie’s presentation we met with Milestone Labs to give them an update of our progress to date. My team and I are team Solstice (team 1) so we went first. The folks at Milestone gave some good feedback and advice. They were delighted with our interviews and direction we’re going in. One thing we didn’t do was provide as much of our product as possible. We still have to do more sketches and ideation around a few key details regarding our product. From this meeting my team and I reconviented to brainstorm, reflect, and conduct a list of materials we need for the actual Make-a-thon. As a team we found this material called hydrophilic rubber, which is usually used in winter tires. We have a meeting with a material science professor to give us even more insight on materials and such. Also I have a professor who is a shoe cobbler on hi own time and he pointed us to a few materials as well. None the less we’re super excited for this event and our more refined product prototype!

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Make-a-thon

This week we got an introduction to the Make-a-thon. The participants of this event go beyond our Digital Making seminar course. Its expanded to Industrial design students from Dr. Deana McDonagh and Jim Kendall’s course, as well as students from Jeff Ginger’s Makerspace. This pre-event to the actual Make-a-thon gave us a general overview of what was going to take place leading up to the weekend long event. Later during the session there was a panel of a few returning experts and a few new ones. Some new faces were Isaac, John, and Steve. They all spoke about their disabilities and the daily frustrations they face. The panel even discussed some of the unique ways they’ve adapted to make the best of their situations.

John’s sock with three attached loops
Joh’s sock with three attached loops

Above is an image of one of John’s sock. I thought this was so simple, yet very effective. Apart of John’s condition is very minimal grip strength. So task like putting on socks or buttoning a shirt is difficult to him. A simple life hack he came up with was sewing loops on the outer edge of his sock, which he can fit around his fingers and pull on the sock. It crazy to think this is all it took and it making a huge difference.

Steve from the panel also gave us an overview of Clark Lindsey, which is a  premier retirement community for today’s accomplished adults. From the presentation he gave I found there to be quite some opportunity in this specific sector. He put a heavy emphasis on fall prevention. Maybe we can design some sort of new innovative thing around this opportunity.

The last part of the Make-a-thon pre-event was a social portion. This time was for everyone to meet and talk amongst each other. Since we’ve been working on our project for sometime  used this portion to to talk with some of the new experts and students to see if any wanted to get involved. We did meet a potential new team member from Jeff’s makerspace seminar. She seemed very interested in what it was Solestice is trying to do. After this It really just turned into a team meeting where we mapped out what we needed to from the session up until the Make-a-thon itself.


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FabLab 2.0

Inkscape vector file of watch to be laser cut

This week we returned to the FabLab. We continued to familiarize ourselves with all the tools and tech the lab has to offer. We specifically learned a vector editing software called Inkscape. Through this workshop we learned how to create basic shapes, manipulate them, and produce more. After learning the basics of the software we learned to transform images into vector graphics. These skills were then applied to a customized watch. The watch is a device that allows patients who have to do bicep curls and rotation in wrist during rehabilitation. The base of the watch consist of 3 wooden circles, two of which have rectangles on each side. I thought it would be help patients if the watch had small arrow indications of which way the device goes. The top layer rotates, so I designed an arrow pointing in the direction of proper rotation.

3 layered watch with electrical components

After this we moved into sewing. Unlike most of my peers I have experienced sewing. My sophomore year I sewed a jacket with a sleeping bag attachment completely from scratch. So during the tutorials and walkthroughs I was a couple steps ahead. We all picked the fabrics we wanted our wristband for the watch to be and then cut it to scale.  We sew it right sice in and sewed the seam. This created the sort of sack like appearance of the band. Getting it right side out was a hassle, it required us to use these thin wooden rods to pull the fabric through. We finished up by attaching velcro strips to the band to ensure a comfortable and secure fit to the wrist.

Images showcasing the process of sewing and creating the band for the watch

The second half of class each group presented to Milestone Labs and Adam Bleakney. We’ve made a lot of progress since last speaking with them. We got a lot of insight from this conversation. We realized we hadn’t thought everything thoroughly. Our design is solid but we have to really hone in on the attachment aspect of it. The overall ease of use should be convenient for the user. They also asked a lot of questions regarding materials of our device. We are currently scheduling a time to interview a material science professor here at the university. This week I have scheduled a virtual interview with my physical therapy. We also have a meeting this monday with my professor who handmakes shoes. We plan to do a bunch more research structured around our opportunity and project idea.

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Week 5

This week we were introduced to four guest speakers: Sneha Subramanian from the Illini service dogs, John Hornick author of “ 3D Printing Will Rock the World”, Jeff Ginger from the CU Community Fab lab, and the Illinois Informatics Institute. We began with a brainstorming session with the Illini Service Dogs. We specially were looking at areas of opportunity with improving disabled users independence with service dogs. Ideas bounced around and some really interesting things came from this. After the brainstorming session John Hornick brought so much of the 3D printing industry to our attention. There are so many trends out there, but John emphasised 3 main trends. One of which is that 3D printing spurs innovation, it also increases democratization. Lastly 3D printing is full customizable. I personally really enjoyed all the different innovative projects globally that John mentioned to us.

Jeff from CU community Fab lab gave a very energetic and passionate overview of the lab itself. He told us of all the resources and network we have here on campus. He then went into showing some of his personal projects, all produced at the CU Fablab. He designed this really cool solar power laptop case that charged his laptop. He also created this octopus dongle sort of thing that has every plug in port you could think of. Jeff seems to really be passionate about innovation and I though his overall presentation was inspirational.

After the guest presentation we were given on from our TA Mehmet Aydin on Design Thinking. During his presentation he introduced us to the Design Thinking Modules. You have Inspiration- Ideation- Implementation model. You then have Empathy- Define ( we focus on defining the opportunity from an empathetic standpoint. Then you have Prototype- Test phase. Mehmet also mentioned the idea of diverging, converging and repeating the entire process. You have to just do it. It kind of ties back to last weak guest Mike Henson statement of, “ Fail early, fail often.” The design process is a process of decision making and doing things. You have to ideated on an idea and act on it. Fail and fail and through each failure new innovation ill emerge.

Once Mehmet’s presentation  we broke off into our teams to do a “Stories & Experience” exercise. The task of the exercise was for us to look at our interview Q/A and diverge deeper insight from them.We were able to really figure out our users frustrations, emotions, limitations, pretty much the good and bad. Solicestice in particular, was able implement the experiences of the user to create more value with our potential product. It gave us a framework to further structure of customer discovery and validation of the idea itself.



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Week 3 Reflection

This week we had one of the coldest days of my lifetime. We experienced the polar vortex. Temperature dropped so low that the Chancellor of the University canceled classes campus wide. Being the doers we are, the cold front didnt stop us from innovating. We held course digitally and got to get to know the creatives at Milestone Studios. They told us a bit about what they do. Each team was required to present the areas of opportunity gained from our mentors stories. Each team was given feedback and later went into an extensive  brainstorming session.

We broke into breakout sessions with the mentors we met the week prior. The task was to really hone in on the problem statements. We did this by completing the challenge sheet provided by Milestone studios. After this activity we had a clear vision of specified areas we’d like to innovate.

My team and I were very moved by Jenna’s story.  We really want our design to be driven by affordability and accessibility. We decided to move forward with the idea of designing a shoe tread that gives prosthetic users the ability to safely walk through snow, rain, and other inclimate settings. A tread for all terrain. Jenna stressed the complications of using her prosthetic even further. She was really behind our idea. The thought of a detachable thread for prothstetics could make all the difference for its users.  Our opportunity statement is: “To create detachable tread attachments that can be used to travel in a variety of terrains.” Our device won’t be limited to just snow but all inclusive for users to maneuver through sand, uneven ground, and pretty much any terrain as previously mentioned.

I personally feel that we can create rea value for people with this potential product. Nearly every single one us of have experienced the inconvenience of issues with daily mobility. We all face a multitude of difficulties that surprisingly could benefit from such a product like the one we are developing. We have to do more research on a few things, and possibly some case studies, but we are in a good place. We plan to meet and get a few concepts down on paper. We’re designing with the user in mind and at the forefront. In the weeks to come we’ll work towards having fidelity models ranging from low-high. I’m excited for the future potential applications of this device we are developing.

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Week 3 Reflection

This week due to the weather, we had a virtual class. I was very excited to use Zoom and I believe the session was still productive despite the weather setback.

I really enjoyed the presentation and feedback from milestone labs. They showed us how to examine opportunities we found in our daily lives and to determine the design need. A great example was one girl shared how she kept losing her keys. Therefore, she decided to put her keys on a hair tie and keep it around her wrist. I too did the same thing last year when I kept losing my keys. I had never even realized this was a design opportunity and how I had come up with an innovative solution to the problem.

Picture showing key on a hair tie (found on google images).

I also really liked learning about assistive devices. I had never before considered how glasses were an assistive device. Other great examples mentioned by my classmates were hearing aids and walkers. It was interesting to see how sometimes a design hack can easily become to universally accepted design. The example given to us by milestone labs was the hack of putting tennis balls on the bottom of walkers. This soon became the accepted design and products entered the market for walkers that were modeled after tennis balls.

I think the presentation by milestone labs gave us a lot of great ideas to consider when moving forward with our project. One of my big takeaways was a design can almost always be improved. Milestone did a great job of pointing out how people come up with design hacks daily and just because these hacks work, it doesn’t mean they are necessarily the best version. We shared our preliminary ideas with milestone labs and one of our ideas was creating a wheelchair cup holder or phone holder. We had initially had this idea however, we conducted some research and realized there were already a lot of products on the market. However, milestone encourage us to ask our mentors how helpful these products were because there is always room for improvement.

Moving forward, our team will be focusing on an idea that Arielle (our preferred mentor) brought to our attention. We will be trying to improve an athlete’s grip on the hand ring of the racing wheelchairs under difficult weather conditions. Specifically, the example we were given was if an athlete is racing in the rain the grip can become slippery and this provides unfavorable conditions. We will be looking to work with multiple textures and we will have to find a way to put a cover on both the top of the hand ring and the sides.