This Wednesday, we participated in a workshop from Autodesk representatives on Fusion 360, an integrated CAD software. We were tasked with creating a phone holder. The representative leading the workshop walked us through the steps to design the phone holder. We are going to print them in the MakerLab later this week. I love this course because we are able to design and create things that we (or others) can actually use. You can see the phone holder I designed here.
Autodesk workshop where we designed phone holders in Fusion 360. The image on the screen is the phone holder we designed.
In addition to designing the basic holder, we also had the opportunity to customize it. We could choose a material, paint colors, add decals, etc. This was my first time utilizing any CAD software, and I really enjoyed it. I thought the Fusion interface was very simple and intuitive. However, I have heard that this is not the case with other CAD softwares. I would love to learn different softwares and see how they differ form each other.
After the workshop, we had about 45 minutes to work with our teams to create “How Might We” statements. We used the post-it notes from last class to help us write them. My team narrowed our work down to 3 “How Might We” statements. These statements are an essential part of the Ideation phase of the design process, so we are testing if our idea to create a tread for prosthetic users will work. This activity challenged us to not be too broad nor too specific. We found it difficult to find a balance. I am looking forward to the next few weeks in the Fab Lab to continue our project!
Hi there! I am a Senior studying Marketing and Information Systems/Information Technology. I chose to take this course in order to expand my creative and design thinking skills that I can apply to my future career. I am grateful that we are provided the opportunity to take this course as Business majors.
Week 5 was an information overload as we heard from 4 speakers about potential partnerships, campus resources, innovation in the 3D printing space, and the human-centered design process.
New Opportunities
Our first speaker was Sneha Subramanian from Illini Service Dogs. She gave a great presentation about the needs that her organization faces for cheap and innovative solutions to problems that their dogs face every day. A few ideas she mentioned were redesigning collars and leashes, easily attachable and detachable leashes to wheelchairs, and easier ways for dogs to open cabinet doors. While no group ended up taking Illini Service Dogs on as their mentor this semester, the presentation was still very informative and I hope that future classes choose to tackle these problems!
3D Printing Innovation
Our next speaker was John Hornick, author of 3D Printing Will Rock the World, and an acclaimed speaker on innovation in the 3D printing space. John’s presentation focused on the innovation, customization, and democratization of 3D printing and its impact on the world. He talked about how the democratization of 3D printing has been a catalyst for customization and innovation within the space. One notable example he gave was of a 5-year-old named Cameron Haight who was born without an arm. Cameron has customized his prosthetic with custom 3D printed attachments as a way of expressing himself. He has even 3D printed prosthetics for other kids like him. Here 3D printing has been used as a way for little kids to be proud of their prosthetics and what makes them unique. John also went on to talk more about the future of the industry. He mentioned how 3D printing in healthcare is moving towards substitutes which attempt to improve functionality, instead of replacements which simply mimic it. One interesting example he gave was of a molecular self-assembly project conducted by the University of London that is using 3D printing and human cells to create bio-mechanical structures. Overall, John’s talk was very informative and we were very lucky to him present to our class.
Exploring Resources
Jeff Ginger was our third speaker of the day and he told us about his job as director of the Fab Lab at the University of Illinois. The Fab Lab is a maker space on campus that houses many different tools that students and community member can use to build things. Our CU Fab Lab is part of a larger global network of Fab Labs that share best practices and aim to democratize making to everyone. The students in our class have varying experience levels with the Fab Lab so it was helpful to learn about the full range of services they offer. One thing that stuck out to me about Jeff’s talk was the concept of DIWO, or Do It With Others. This concept perfectly embodies our class and our approach to making. Through Yellowdig, blog posts, and class presentations we are encouraged to all work together to share ideas and best practices. This process helps keeps us accountable to the true needs of our mentors and ensures that we come up with the best possible solution. Before this class, I thought that design was a very individual process, but now I see that design takes a lot of people in order to succeed.
Human Centered Design Process
The final speaker of the day was our TA Mehmet Aydin. His presentation focused on the principles of Human Centered Design and how we can apply the process to our own projects. One of his main points was about the process of diverging and converging ideas in multiple iterations to get to the best possible outcome. The diverging process involves creating choices, while the subsequent converging process forces you to pick from that pool of choices. He also brought up a unique example of how simple solutions can be the most effective. Mehmet shared the story of how little kids were scared of using MRI machines and were having trouble laying still throughout the whole process. Instead of redesigning the whole MRI machine, doctors made the experience fun for kids by decorating the machine as a pirate ship or space ship and pretending that the kids had to stay still as part of a game. This made the experience fun for the kids and yielded more accurate scan results.
Mehmet’s presentation on Human Centered Design
Trying It Out
After Mehmet’s presentation, our class split up into our teams to try the Human Centered Design process for ourselves. We started by recounting the interviews our teams had conducted over the past few weeks and identifying the issues, motivators, and barriers surrounding our need and need groups. After using the “diverge” stage to come up with as many ideas as possible, our next task was to group our findings into segments. This part of the process helped us organize our thoughts and see broad trends across our needs. This exercise was a valuable learning process for all of the teams and it helped us identify main needs and areas where we still needed to conduct interviews to receive more information.
Team Evinco
Team 3D Bal
Team Solestice
Team Movi
Thank you to all of the presenters who took the time to share their experiences with our class!
This week we focused on the CAD software, specifically Autodesk Fusion 360. Prior to class this week we learned quick shortcuts and the basic fundamental of parametric designing. Dan Banach, education program manager at autodesk, gave an immersive presentation of the world of Fusion 360. He has more than 30 years of Fusion 360 knowledge. He was there from the very start. It all started with a 3D model of a five and quarter sized floppy disk. Dan also simply broke down the ideology of the cloud product innovative software Fusion 360, into three main components: use, design, and make. After his intro we had the task of going through a tutorial of creating a phone charging stand. This helped us get even more familiar with the functions and capabilities of the software.
Dan Banach during the Fusion 360 Workshop
I myself have some knowledge and previous with CAD. However its with solidworks, which is a lot different from Fusion 360. You have similar capabilities, but solidworks is far more complicated. I like how simplified Fusion makes computer aided design. The shortcuts and keys were super easy to pick up on and the drop down menus house every function. Solidworks took me some time to get a stable grip on. Both softwares are great in their own respective ways. Regardless of which a person chooses you’ll still get a understanding of not only parametrics but design thinking. The software gives you a different method of approaching problems and design decisions. The simplest thing from a curve to the material itself of the product all attribute to the overall product.
My final design and render of the phone charging stand
After the Fusion Workshop ended we were given another on “How to Statements” from our TA Mehmet Aydin. This activity allowed us to further explore the centralized themes within our ideas. After choosing the top three themes, which we wrote out in concise sentences, we created a how to statement. Essentially staging a question of how were were going to do some of the things we sought out to solve. Like mentioned in last week’s presentation his is a cycle within the design process. We came to conclusions last week, but this exercise allowed us to revisited, rethink, and revitalize some of those ideas. I feel like now we have a pretty concret grip on the opportunity and the market in which we’re trying to infiltrate.
Week 6 took a very exciting turn as we finally delved deeply
into creating 3D models in Autodesk Fusion360. Our pre-class activity consisted
on making a box-like crate, and we continued getting familiarized with Fusion
through further making with Autodesk professionals.
By becoming acquainted with the software, we gained a
significantly better understanding on how to approach design challenges with
our end user mind. Simple things such as altering the material had an impact
which must be accounted for. Lucky for us, color tends to not make as big of a
difference – which be a vital factor when we approach our final prototype.
At the end of class, we delved deeper into exploring our
project’s themes, insights and guiding questions. We came to the conclusion that
we will really need to hone in on how
wheelchairs would want to customize their chair. The ability to customize
exists, but we need to find out which accessories will bring them the most joy.
Nonetheless, once the design challenge is worked through, we
realized that creating awareness about the products will be a huge challenge. A
useful or desired accessory is useless if the target users do not know about
its existence. Our challenge, became very 2 sided, as merely creating it will
not bring the results we desire to see. We will need to effectively market and
inform the users about the accessory if we aspire to make a meaningful impact.
‘Design thinking? Is there a specific method of thinking for designing? Is it about not liming yourself so that you can think of something creative? What exactly is design thinking?‘
These were some questions on my mind when I heard the term “design thinking” for the first time. As someone who does not believe in my own creativity, I thought the term must be about a specific process that the designers follow when designing something new that helps them foster creativity. I thought this must be the secret formula for being creative and coming up with innovative ideas.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite what design thinking was. However, it is a critical mindset to have for successful designing. In fact, this may not be THE secret formula for fostering creativity, but it is certainly a mindset that will help with the process. Design thinking is basically another term for human-centered design, which means that when designing a product, every decision made has to be based around the intended user of the product. This is a critical mindset to have because when you design for the intended users, it may lead to an idea that you would not have thought of otherwise. While you might be working on a design believing that you are providing what the users want, if you do not take an effort to reach out to those users and understand their motivations and desires, you may be going in a completely wrong direction.
An example of such situations was shared by our TA, Mehment Aydin. He shared a story of how for children, going through a MRI machine is a scary experience. It is challenging for them to stay calm without any movement while being stuck in a dark, narrow space with lots of noise surrounding them. Upon hearing this problem, we might jump straight into how we can adjust the machine to provide more comfortable experience. Perhaps we can find a way to decrease the noise level. Perhaps we can make the bed more comfortable. But what solved the problem was much simpler than those ideas.
Our TA, Mehmet Aydin, sharing examples of successful designs of providing MRI experience by going through design thinking
What was the solution? Turn the whole MRI experience into a fun role-playing game. Instead of having the children go through the MRI process in all seriousness, the solution was to have the doctors and nurses be pirates and have the children to stay hidden from them in the MRI machine, which is decorated as a ship, until the whole procedure was finished. Now, instead of being afraid of the darkness and the noise, the children were having fun and filled with excitement as they stayed in the machine, “hiding” from the bad guys. In fact, Mehmet shared that they had so much fun that they were asking when would be the next time that they come back.
How could someone reach such a solution without truly understanding the problem from the perspectives of the users? That is what a design thinking is all about.
Jeff Ginger sharing the importance of design thinking and how the intended users need to be on your mind constantly when designing
Going Forward
This mindset of design thinking is very important for my team as we try to design something that will allow the youth wheelchair users to easily customize their wheelchairs and improve their experiences. We really need to understand why the users may want to customize their wheelchairs and in which way they would like to. To find out all these different factors, we are in the process of reaching out to not only youth wheelchair users but also adult wheelchair users who have experiences of being youth wheelchair users themselves. We want to help them step into their childhood and have them share their “dream wheelchairs.” What is this wheelchair capable of? What does it look like? We want to bring out the child-side of the users to really dive into the limitless creativity we had when we were kids. By being in this mindset of children, we believe that we will be able to find a solution to help the youth wheelchair users enjoy their experience more.
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.
Class today was quite speaker heavy. Amongst everyone who
presented a PowerPoint of sorts, we had 4 different speakers… lots of
information to take in, however a few ideas really stood out to me. Initially,
I would love to start off with the idea of diverging and then converging. I
like to think of this as ideation then analysis. Our readings labeled this
process synthesis. We capture our learnings, discover the significance of them,
and ultimately create actionable takeaways to move forward with.
One of our TAs presented this concept right before our group activity. It is crucial to let ideas out, having them free-flow and generate one after another. Nonetheless, it is then necessary to analyze these ideas and converge your choices to be able to make a focused decision. Overall, today’s session was an epitome of that. The 4 speakers presented countless ideas and insights, which we then had to prioritize and analyze within the scopes of our projects within the DRES community.
Accordingly, the two ideas which I converged on by the end of class were customization and accessibility, which yes does seem like the recurring theme for me and my group. John Hornick initially mentioned customization as one of the pillars of 3D printing. Customization allows for individuality and personality to be expressed through utilitarian design, which is an extremely rare combination. Until now, wheelchairs have been viewed as a means to an end, with limited ability for the user to inject his or her own ideation into it.
3D printing encourages individuals
to take matters into their own hands and solve problems with an initiative – their
own initiative. This individual empowerment is what the final speaker, Jeff Ginger
from FabLab honed in on. We were shown the plethora of the design spaces available,
however merely 7 were available to the general student population. The rest
required some sort of special access. He dubbed this rather useless and
inefficient, and frankly I agree. What good are resources if they are not accessible?
Our team looked at this within the
scope of wheelchair accessories and creating something which the target
community that they will actually want.
We want to make it accessible through not only price point, but also desire. This
will require analyzing consumer product trends and created marketing campaigns
to increase the product awareness once we launch. Design is insignificant if
there is not a user desire.
The week we had a guest speaker from a startup here at the University’s research park called Earth Sense. Mike Hansen, an U of I alumni, gave an amazing presentation on his product development journey. He spoke of stories during his Industrial Design graduate days, the failures he had, and pretty much every problem along the way. Being an industrial designer myself, a lot of his experiences resonated with me. He talked about a system of going from 0-1000 in three intervals. Taking an idea from 0 to 1. Once you get the original prototype you go from 1 to 100, with different iterations of that concept. Finally the 100 to 1000, which is the mass production of a product. You can only imagine how many issues and minute things that intervene with this process.
A few Mike said during his presentation that stuck with me were to “ fail early and fail often”. The earlier on you fail, the quicker and easier it will be to make corrections/alterations. The more you fail the better the end result will turn out. Every failure breaches an opportunity for improvement. Which leads to the other quote from Mike, which was “ try again and again until you succeed.” This isn’t limit to product development, but across life. There’s two type of people the quitters and the go getters.
After Mikes presentation we broke into our teams. We had the task of designing a logo and coming up with a team name. Im apart of team one and we’re focusing on a innovative tread for prosthetic users. We came up with the name Solestice. Yes, we spelled it like the sole of a shoe. Which lead to the design of our logo. Its two triangles stack on top of one another, but they are off centered. After getting the tinker file finished we sent it off to the 3D printed and printed it out.
This week’s guest speaker was from EarthSense, which is a start-up on U of I’s Research Park, and he shared his process of designing a prototype. I was intrigued by his acceptance–and even welcoming–of failure. Personally, when I fail, I am very hard on myself and tend to give up. However, the presentation made me realize that failure is critical to the design process.
EarthSense presenting on the design process.
One piece of advice we were given is to “Fail Early, and Fail Often.” The sooner you fail, the quicker you can alter your product. The more often you fail, the better your product will be because with every failure, you can improve your product even more. I can relate to this because I am pursuing a career in Market Research. Thus, I have to connect with the consumer and understand their preferences and may have to alter products based on consumer feedback.
The second half of class this week was spent creating a logo for our teams. My team named ourselves Solestice, as we are creating a tread to attach to the bottom of shoes that facilitate walking on snow and ice. We 3D printed a logo, which you can see in the picture below.
3D printing our logo in class.Solestice logo.
In addition to class this week, my team conducted some secondary research to see what other products are on the market related to treads for ice and snow. I found an article that describes the Top 10 Best Traction Cleats for Snow and Ice. I realized that there are some products similar to what we wanted to create. However, to differentiate from these products, we will create treads that also have a soft sole in order to increase comfort when walking for prosthetic users. I am excited to start designing a prototype of of tread!
Hi there! I am a Senior studying Marketing and Information Systems/Information Technology. I chose to take this course in order to expand my creative and design thinking skills that I can apply to my future career. I am grateful that we are provided the opportunity to take this course as Business majors.
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.
You must be logged in to post a comment.