Tag: Inspiration

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Nouvo

August of 2016 changed the lives of my closest friend Amaury Saulsberry, who I consider to be a brother of mine. He created Nouvo shortly after his younger brother was diagnosed with a severe case of GERD, commonly known as acid reflux. It took about four months for him and his family to get the proper diagnosis, and by the time they did 80 percent of his brothers esophagus was damaged.

This led to the beginning of Nouvo. Nouvo is a healthcare tech startup that has created a smart pacifier that monitors  pH and temperature levels in infants saliva as a biomarker for acid reflux. The scope of the technology goes beyond just that as this data of the child’s vitals could potentially pinpoint many other ailments. This smart pacifier is patent.

This is our smart pacifier and integrated app

Through the University wide resources Amaury and the team were able to get act on entrepreneurial endeavors. Course in TEC, BADM, ARTD, Engineering  and even attending workshop and office hours for EIR ( Entrepreneurs In Residence) at the Research Park helped Nouvo get started. We were able to create our first working prototype with resources and skills learned here at the university.

Even now we’re finding more and more helpful resources the university has to offer. We’ve been able to accelerate our rapid prototyping with the use of Fusion 360 and the maker lab 3D printers. We’ve also upped our fabrication by utilizing the tools at the FabLab. They have a wide range of filament options, laser cutters, and milling machines. We were actually able to use the milling and 3D printing at the FabLab for the circuit board that housed our prototype. These Helped us be one of the health marathon winners this year.

To date Nouvo now has a team of six. All of whom are fellow students ranging from engineering to industrial design backgrounds. The advisory board is comprised of doctors, an FDA lawyer, financial specialist, and much more.

  • Nouvo at TechNexus

  • Nouvo at Think Chicago Roadshow

Nouvo showcasing at EoH 2019

Currently Nouvo is awaiting patent acceptance and the FDA approval process. The product is considered to be a class II device and could take upwards 9 months. During this time we are working on developing our other connected health products. We are working on acquiring additional funding that will go towards perfecting our MVP.

Links to a few of our featured articles

IL Startup Nouvo Is Making a Smart Pacifier to Diagnose Sick Infants
2019 Health Make-a-thon

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/2018-07-29/wired-amaury-saulsberry.html

https://foxillinois.com/news/local/startup-social-gives-sneak-peek-at-student-innovations


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Week 10 Summary: Make-a-thon Pre-Event

The ultimate goal of the Digital Making Seminar course is to create a functioning prototype of whatever it is that each team is working on by the end of the Make-a-thon, taking place from Friday, April 12th, 5:00 pm to Sunday, April 14th, 2:00 pm. What makes this event so exciting is that it not only involves the Digital Making Seminar students but also the students from Dr. Deana McDonagh and Jim Kendall‘s studio class as well as Jeff Ginger‘s Marketspace class. Although the point of the event is to provide the space and resources for the participants to make their ideas come to reality and not to compete against each other, because many external people see the value of what we are doing, we have judges, sponsors, and expert users and mentors to guide us through the progress.

As the date of the event approaches, Dr. Vishal Sachdev, our professor for the course, set up a pre-event, where the participants came together to meet each other as well as some of the mentors and expert users. The pre-event began with the introduction of the make-a-thon with details regarding the schedule and the resources that we would have access to. From the Fablab to Architecture Annex on campus, we are fortunate to have been provided with access to many resources. We are all very excited to utilize the resources to develop on the ideas that we have worked on so far throughout the semester.

While sharing the details of the event, Dr. Sachdev, as well as Dr. McDonagh, reemphasized that the purpose of the event is to design with the expert users and mentors in different opportunities that have been identified. We are not solving any problems or challenges. It is critical for the participants to remember this as we want to constantly keep the users in our mind while constructing prototypes and receive feedback by working with them.

After going through the details of the event, we were introduced to a few of our mentors and expert users as well as new ones. Each one of them took the time to introduce themselves, sharing their stories to inspire us.

John and Isaiah, two of the new expert users that have been introduced, shared how they adapted to the struggles that they faced. For example, John, whose condition does not allow him to have enough grip strengths to use his fingers to pull apart a sock to put over his foot, kindly demonstrated the solution that he found for it.

John’s sock which has been modified to fit his need.

As pictured above, with help from his mother, he simply had three loops sewed around the neck of the sock, allowing him to insert his fingers through them and to tug on them. This simple, yet brilliant idea inspired many of us, encouraging us to think of simple ideas and to look for inspiration from the daily objects. We realized that by doing that, we will be able to come up with things that many users would have access to and find easy to use.

Steve, a representative of Clark-Lindsey, also shared the stories of the residents and their needs in the local retirement community. From the challenges of holding the phones to video chat with the family to the danger of falling due to dementia and pre-Parkinson’s disease, he shared how we can leave a big impact on many different types of users through this event. This sharing inspired some groups, such as the team that is working on developing a product to help the people with prosthetic legs to improve the balance to do yoga, to think of ways to expand the user base.

Afterward, we were provided with opportunities to talk with the expert users and mentors to ask questions and to receive feedback on the ideas that we have been developing throughout the semester. Some teams were also able to talk with students from other classes to see if any of them would be interested in joining the team.

As we continue towards the make-a-thon, most of the teams are moving into the prototyping phase. So far, we came up with many different ideas and developed on them, constantly receiving feedback from the expert users. However, we understand that there will be different challenges that will arise when we try to make the ideas tangible, which is why prototyping is important. From low fidelity prototypes to 3D designing through Fusion360 and printing the product, we will be experimenting with different ways to develop the prototypes. We are all very excited to continue to work on our ideas and look forward to presenting them during the make-a-thon!

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Setting the Pace for the Make-a-thon

This week, instead of holding a regular class, we had an opportunity to come together with the rest of the Make-a-thon participants. Make-a-thon is a 3-day capstone event for our course, where the goal is to develop a working prototype of the idea that we have been working on over the semester by the end of it. Just like any other make-a-thon or a hackathon event, there will be a panel of judges to select the best prototype/idea, and prizes, including a 3D printer, will be given out. What got me excited about this event is that it is not only us, the Digital Making Seminar students, participating in it but there are students from the Accessibility + Design course, as well as other design and making courses and programs across the campus who will be participating in it. With everyone working on the theme of accessibility, I am glad that this event is open to more people and hope that it will continue to expand over the years.

It was exciting for me to see a room full of participants and the mentors, all buzzing with various ideas. With so many people present, I could not wait to see the different ideas that they were exploring and what would come out by the end of the event.

Getting Inspired by the Mentors and Expert Users

Another important part of the meeting was being introduced to new mentors/expert users and hearing their stories. One of the most inspiring stories that I heard was from John, an expert user, who has conditions that do not allow him to have the necessary grip strengths on his hands to pull a sock apart to put it over his foot. He shared the challenge of this as well as how he overcame it. His solution was to attach three loops around the neck of the sock, through which he can insert his fingers and pull it over his foot. It was an extremely simple, yet brilliant idea.

This reminded me of the phrase “simple is the best” and made me reevaluate the ideas that my team and I are working on. To ensure that our product is usable by a large user base, we need to make sure that the idea is simple and clear enough that it can be used easily. As an idea develops and makes progress, I think it is very easy to lose the initial goal or a mindset that the idea was developed from due to the excitement and the desire to do more. However, since the ultimate purpose is to allow the users to use the product easily, we always need to be conscious of them. John’s story inspired me to look around the daily objects to see if they can be modified to help with the opportunity that my team and I have identified.

Team Rotam

With the new inspiration and energy from the participants, my team and I gathered during the breakout session to talk about our ideas further. While discussing, we realized that we have several ideas but it would be more helpful to have them be tangible to determine whether they are viable options or not. Therefore, we are looking to develop on the ideas further and create a few low fidelity prototypes of each to test them out. We expect challenges from transferring our ideas to tangible products, but we are also very excited to see how they will turn out. We believe that with tangible prototypes, we will also have an easier time demonstrating our ideas to Ryan to receive his feedback, which is why this is very important.

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Week 10: Initial Introduction to the Make-a-thon

Rather than having our regular class time, we attended an introduction to the Make-a-thon this week. In this session, we learned about the schedule of the Make-a-thon, the tools available during the Make-a-thon, and the prize. More importantly, we got a chance to learn the stories of more mentors and learn how we should think about the larger target user base other than just the mentor we are working with. In addition, we got a chance to interview and connect with these mentors at the end. Through this chance, we gain additional inspiration from these mentors.

Inspiration from more mentors

During this session, we met Adam and Ryan, but we also met new mentors, including John, Isiah, and Steve. They brought their stories and how they adapt to the struggles they once faced. In addition, Steve brought the stories and the needs of residents living in Clark Lindsey as well. Learning about the needs of residents living in Clark Lindsey, I found that there is a huge need for fall prevention, and this is very similar to my team’s pursuant in designing a product that can help people improve balance during yoga practices and can potentially expand the user base to people who may experience balance issues in their every-day life.

Changes in ideas

Initially, my team has the idea of designing a yoga prosthetic to replace the prosthetic for daily usage for amputees because there are running prosthetic and ballet prosthetic in the market, and a yoga prosthetic may help amputees as well. However, with the thinking of increasing the user base in mind, we are also considering whether we should design an attachment instead now. But when the product wants to reach a greater user base other than amputees who love practicing yoga only, we will need to consider how the attachment can be easily attached and not create any misfits in people’s life.

Having this in mind, we asked Steve a few questions during the session on whether he thinks an outside attachment people’s leg may help in maintaining people’s balance. His answer was that it depends on people’s diagnosis because if people do not have the strength to walk, an attachment may not be enough to help in fall prevention.

Things to do in the future

With this constraint in mind, my team will need further discussion on the feasibility and functionality of the idea of an attachment, how we can make small changes to our ideas to fit the need of a larger user base, and whether we should focus on fitting the need of the smaller user base (amputees who practicing yoga or people who want to practice yoga) for now. Moving forward, we will need to create more low fidelity prototypes to test out our ideas and the functionality of the design.

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Week 8: Second Visit in Fab Lab

Continuing from last week, we visited the Fab Lab again this week. In this week, we were still separated into two groups, and we switched sections. This week, I learned how to build an electric circuit using the breadboard. It could be big, but then it could be very small and use to build a computer. I think this is very important to know about in today’s day, when we rely heavily on electronics. Before this week, I thought that as a business major, I would never get in touch in building an electric circuit myself, since I am not an ECE student. After this training section, I gained a better understanding of how to operate with the tools in the Fab Lab and the potential necessary tools for design.

After the Fab Lab training session, we entered the stage of prototyping. While we were waiting for the meeting with the Milestone Labs, we started planning again for our prototype. We used some other materials to redo our low-fidelity prototype and talked about our concerns on some of the ideas. Afterward, we met with the Milestone Labs together with Jenna. During the meeting, we discussed our project progress as well as our upcoming research plan, a meeting with the founder of the organization Yoga for Amputees. Again, we discussed our initial ideas and our low-fidelity prototypes. In the end, we came to the realization that some ideas we initially have may not be the most feasible idea to have for our product, including the idea of using magnetic tools and the idea of extending the frontal surface of the attachment.

After our team’s meeting with the Milestone Labs, we also met with the founder of Yoga for Amputees, who is an amputee and has a lot of experience working with different amputees across the United States. She provided us a lot of new insights that we had never considered prior to this meeting. She talked about how a relatively fixed ankle and curved heel of the prosthetic leg has contributed to the difficulties for amputees to keep balance. In this case, she suggests us to try to design a product that can allow some curved flexibility to the ankle but at the same time also prevents the ankle from “moving” horizontally (see video). In addition, she also suggests us to design a product with a flatter heel that can allow the amputee to have greater contact with the ground. She also brought up ballet prosthetics that has already existed in the market. We researched the ballet prosthetics and also found that the key to the balance of the ballet prosthetics was the different ankle design that ballet prosthetics have as compared to the normal prosthetics. Also, she mentioned that there would be different needs for different amputees due to the preferences of their prosthetic usage and what makes them feel secure. Therefore, we may be better off if we could talk to different types of amputees to gain what they think about the product so that we could bring customization to our designed product to meet users’ needs. Overall, we gained a lot of insights from the meetings with Milestone Labs and with the founder of Yoga for Amputees. From these insights, we will redesign our prototype and try to get to a more suitable solution.

We got our inspiration of the potential design of ankle from the 3D-Printed pangolins, which will only curve on one side, but will not curve if we turn it to the other side. We believe that this structure of ankle may provide more horizontal stability and prevent falling from ankle bending.
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FAB LAB!!!!

This week I wasn’t able to physically be in class due to some unfortunate circumstances. I was however able to visit Jeff and see the Fab Lab prior to this weeks workshops. I learned of some of the complex filments and advanced 3D printers. I got to know a bit of the staff as well. In terms of class, I was able to get up to speed from my wonderful team members. This week was the start of our workshops through the Fab Lab. The class was given a tour of the entire facility by Jeff Ginger, who is the director of the lab. He gave a presentation during last weeks class. After the initial tour the class was split into different workshops within the fablab. Some people were learning the laser cutter while others built circuits.

After this the class went back into their  groups and brainstormed for the remainder of the class period. The TA also assisted during the brainstorming session given a different prompt every 3 minutes. This helped further our ideation and conceptual prototyping, while designing with an open mind. My group was able to rapidly draw up multiple porttype ideas with the given parameters of the prompts. In case you forgot,  we are developing a shoe tread to facilitate walking on ice/snow (all terrain) for prosthetic users. By the end of this activity my team was able to come up with a MVP. They chose the easiest and most feasible of the concepts that we can make a crude prototype of. By next class we will have a usable prototype of our tread attachment. It will have velcro straps to connect with the shoe and acchatable spikes on the tread.

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Week 5 Recap – Inspiration, Innovation, and Implementation

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!

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Fusion 360 Workshop

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.


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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 5 Reflection

This past week in class, we had presentations from 4 speakers. One from Illini Service Dogs, which provided us with updates and ideas for potential opportunities to explore this semester. The next was from  John Hornick, the author of 3D Printing Will Rock the World, via zoom. He spoke to us about what is going on currently in 3D printing, and where 3D printing will likely be in the near future. It was such a cool experience to be able to hear from an expert who knows so much about the industry. One of the things that fascinated me the most was that they are able to 3D print skin and are working on the ability to 3D print bone. He mentioned that they want to utilize this technology in hospitals and VA hospitals, which is incredible. The future of 3D printing is surely going to be amazing!

Our next speaker was Jeff Ginger of the CU Community Fab Lab. Jeff spoke to our class on behalf of the Fab Lab, which we will be visiting as a class in the upcoming weeks. Last semester I took Jeff’s course in Usability of Digital Interfaces, and it was one of my favorite classes I have taken at U of I. Jeff is such an interesting and energetic person! He is full of a lot of knowledge about making and has a very positive attitude that makes his classes fun and exciting. I am very much looking forward to visiting the Fab Lab and learning more from him.

Our third presentation was from our TA Mehmet Aydin. He gave a presentation about Design Thinking and how it can be used to improve situations of all kinds. He showed us the children’s redesign of the MRI machine. He also explained to us our exercise for the class which was going through what we know about our opportunity so far, and organizing our ideas on Post-its. This was a helpful exercise as we worked through it with Adam, one of our mentors, and we were able to clearly define our opportunity areas we will be exploring further in the class.

I am looking forward to learning more about Fusion this upcoming week and beginning to dive into the ideation stage of the process!