Tag: Inspiration

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Week 4 Reflection

I can’t believe week 4 is already over! As the semester continues to progress, I find myself getting more excited about the course and the opportunities we are finding through exploring. During class this past week, we got a visit from Mike Hansen to talk about the work he is doing with his company. Mike was a former teacher of mine, and one of my favorite teachers I have had in college. Throughout the courses he taught us, he would always remind us to “fail early and fail often.” This message has helped my understanding of design greatly throughout my four years at the university. Failing early and often gives you the chance to explore many iterations and possibilities when designing. That message will continue to be true throughout this course as well, as we will need to try many possibilities to find a solution for our opportunity area.

I was so impressed to see the work that Mike’s company is doing. As well as very happy that he seems to love his work so much. The company is in the early stages of developing robots to help farmers evaluate the needs of their farm from the ground, rather than by drones as most other companies are currently doing. In developing the robots, Mike makes tons of iterations of how it might look and function in order to find one workable solution. It was very inspiring to see first hand how a message I have been taught in school is so applicable in real life.

My teams opportunity statement is  “To help athlete’s improve the grip on their ring when racing in undesirable weather conditions.” 

We decided to pursue a solution for this opportunity after being inspired by the company created by Arielle for her racing gloves. She told us how during poor weather conditions, racing becomes even more difficult as you no longer have a good grip on the hand rings of the chair. We were lucky to be invited to visit the team practice on Friday morning and get a chance to have a closer look at the chairs, the hand rings, the gloves, and the process that goes into preparing your chair for a race. Wrapping the hand ring is such a difficult and time consuming task, that it would be so great to find a way to streamline that process into something more efficient and easier to do. There is also a lot of potential in the idea of creating a cover for the glove itself during times of harsh weather conditions. I am very excited to explore these ideas more and see what my team and I can come up with in the coming weeks.

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Progress Doesn’t Always Mean Walking Forward

LESSONS FROM THE FIELDS.

This week, we were back at the Maker Lab solidifying our inspirations and ideas. We were able to confront a collective fear together: failure. Many of us had expressed fear of failure, and while I had not done so publicly, it was a thought that has always been floating around in the back of mind too. We had the incredible opportunity to talk to an UIUC alumnus, Mike Hansen, from EarthSense, a startup dedicated to using autonomy, software, and innovation to revolution agriculture data collection. Mike came in prepared with stories of failure after failure to share with us, and he showed us how failures stacked up into successes and solutions. He showed us how failures can be unintentional successes with the way that the camera guard he made only allowed the camera to be installed a single way, which later became a needed feature when considering different assemblers of the TerraSentia he designed. It was one thing to be told to “try again and again until you succeed,” but hearing Mike’s actual experiences helped make it click for me. I realized that it really was okay – and actually expected! – to have failures in the process of innovation.

Mike Hansen telling us about failures and different innovation mindsets.

TINKERING AROUND.

After, Mike’s talk, we split off into our groups to discuss a team name, the direction our product will go in, and a team logo. My team, previously Team 1, had a very difficult time coming up with a name, and cycled through various varieties of OnTread, Solestetic, other obscure words, etc. Yet, eventually, taking inspiration from a previously vetoed name, we settled on the name Solestice. Solestice is a portmanteau of the words ‘sole,’ referring to the bottom of a shoe, and ‘solstice,’ an astronomical phenomenon that occurs twice a year. Our hope for this project is to create an attachable tread for prosthetics users to use when walking on ice and other similarly slippery terrain. Afterwards, we created a logo which resembles two triangles stacked upon each other, slightly misaligned and familiarized ourselves with the Tinkercad program through modeling said logo and 3D printing it on one of the machines present in the Maker Lab.

MOVING.

As we wrapped up our team name, we discussed a plan to meet with our mentor Jenna, a prosthetic user, once again to make sure that the direction we take our product in is user-centered and truly something prosthetic users can and want to use. We will definitely take the new mindsets we have learned throughout each class – that of user-centered design and not viewing failure as a taboo – and apply it to our own research and development process!

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Finding Creative Confidence and Inspiration

Finding Creative Confidence

One of my biggest concerns of taking the Digital Making Course is my ability to be creative. There is so much fuss around the world about needing to be innovative; about how we should be changing the world. However, I never truly believed that I have the ability to leave such an impact through a creative idea. This lack of confidence caused me to feel nervous about the course. Yes, I wanted to learn about the overall process of designing a product. Yes, I wanted to learn how to use computer-aided design (CAD) software. Yes, I wanted to learn how to use a 3D printer and successfully be able to print an object. But I wanted to do more. With the help of the mentors, the professor, and the fellow students, I wanted to design a product that will bring a positive impact on someone else’s life. Yet, how am I supposed to do that when I do not even believe in my ability to do so?

Thankfully, the course began with learning about different mindsets necessary to be a successful designer, one of which was “Creative Confidence.” The concept of this mindset is that a designer needs to believe in oneself’s ability to have big ideas and act on them. Throughout the journey of designing, there will be many ambiguity and failure, but that doesn’t mean I should give up. I just need to continue to explore different ideas and learn from the failures. It may be easier said than done, but learning about such mindsets allowed me to be less nervous and be more excited about the journey.

Finding Inspiration

With my upgraded mindsets, I was eager to meet the mentors and learn about their stories. I was ready to be inspired. The meeting began with Adam, who showed the class around the Disability Resources & Educational Services (DRES) facility.

At DRES facility, you can find a wall of Paralympians who have competed in wheelchair racing.

It was amazing to see the training equipment that is used, a timeline of racing wheelchairs showing the evolution hanging from the ceiling, and a workshop where innovative ideas to help the athletes come to a reality. Along the tour, we were introduced to Ariel, who shared her story of 3D printing the wheelchair racing gloves and distributing them around the world at a more affordable price for the customers. Afterward, we were introduced to Ryan, Jenna, and Ron, who openly shared about their experiences with wheelchairs, prosthetic legs, and meeting others with similar experiences.

Even before meeting them, I knew that I would gain inspiration from them. But they surpassed my expectations. I wasn’t aware how much of an inspiration they would provide. I felt that every single experience that they shared were valuable, leaving me frantically taking notes throughout the whole session. One of the most important points that were brought up during the conversation was the problem of affordability. It is mostly not the technology or the idea that is lacking in today’s word, but it is more so that these innovative products are not really affordable right now to the majority of the people who they are created for.

From the conversation, I was able to immediately come up with several ideas that I would like to explore down the road. Not only did it raise my eagerness to dive into the project, but it also raised my confidence. Unlike my worry before, I was already developing multiple ideas, demonstrating that I am more creative than I think.

The conversation also changed my perspective about innovation. It’s not about changing the world. Rather, it’s about improving someone else’s world. Even if it makes a difference in a few people’s lives, that is completely fine. As long as you design for the people and create an idea or a product for them to improve an aspect of their lives, you are an innovator. After all, isn’t that what human-centered design is all about?

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Week 2 Reflection –Inspiration at DRES

In week two, we met our mentors at DRES (Disability Resources and Educational Services). As I visited DRES and heard mentors’ stories, I was touched by many points.
The first thing that stood out to me was the mindset of this course. We called those people who were going to participate in our projects mentors instead of users. This seemed to be a small wording difference, but it implied different meanings: through the projects that we are going to work on for the semester, we are not working towards helping people who have needs or need our help; instead, we are learning from the experts who have more experiences than us. This is something that I have not thought about. Previous to this class, I have taken some marketing classes and a design thinking course, whenever we talked about the targets, we were using words such as users or customers. Although we talked about the importance of customization and strived for tailoring the ideas, products or services to the targets, we were using the mindset that those people need us to fulfill their unmet needs and wants. This made me ignore the fact that those people had more experiences than me in their lives. As I saw the athletes training, I realized that they were stronger and more perseverant than me, and what I am aiming to do should be learning from their experiences and coming up with something that can radically impact someone rather than some minor modifications that don’t matter much to people.

Another thing that moved me was the evolvement of the sports chair. In the room that athletes conducted training, I saw previous versions of sports chair hanging on the ceiling. I was surprised to see how the sports chair changed from very similar to the everyday chair to distinct from the everyday chair. Living in modern life, it seemed natural to me that what people used should be useful and excellent. Seeing all the sports chair reminded me that Rome was not built in one day; what we experienced today resulted from many people’s time and efforts. Just like the “iterate, iterate, and iterate” mindset in human-centered design, I should continually think of ways to improve the work to enhance people’s life. The sports chair also reminded me of the significance of “empathy,” another mindset of human-centered design. Adam, one mentor of our course, shared with us the story of how sports chair evolved throughout the years. In the beginning, the sports chair was designed by companies that didn’t consider the needs of the athletes. Thus, the sports chair had many issues that were not user-friendly. It was athletes who were using the chair pushed the design to be more friendly and useful. When I design in the future, I should always remember stepping in others’ shoes and empathizing with other people’s perspectives.

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Week2: Learning From the Experts

This was my first time walking into the DRES facility. When I walked into this building, I knew that my journey of discovery of opportunities started.

Tour

The beginning of this journey started with a tour of the DRES building. We went underground to the athletes’ practice room, which was also a museum of a collection of generations of racing wheelchairs. We also visited Adam’s “MakerLab” and learned about Arielle’s story of her 3D-printed gloves for athletes.

  • First Generation of Gloves
  • Newest Generation 3D-Printed Gloves

From the first generation that could easily cause hand injuries to the high-cost second generation of gloves to the new, cheap 3D-printed gloves. This transition of products being used by wheelchair tracking athletes reminds me about a book I previously read, Are Your Lights On. In this book, there was a chapter called “Missing the misfit”. The chapter illustrates the importance to find the misfit, which is a solution that produces a mismatch with human beings who have to live with the solution, and come up with a solution to deal with the misfit. However, misfits are usually hard to recognize because humans are very adaptable creatures that we can live with the misfit until we realize that we didn’t have to live that way.

Before the second generation of gloves, wheelchair tracking athletes had no problems with living with the first generation of gloves that would cause hand injuries. Before the 3D-printed gloves, wheelchair tracking athletes used the expensive second generation of gloves with no problems too. But when 3D-printed gloves came to live, people recognized that they didn’t need to race and practice with the previous generations of gloves. Arielle’s successful story helped me realize the importance of looking carefully from life experiences to find opportunities that could improve our life experiences. This can lead to a long-lasting positive impact on our society.

Expert Users Interview

The roundtable interview started with Professor Sachdev’s overview of the goals of this digital making seminar course. Digital fabrication. Quick prototyping. Human-centered design. Learning how to be empathetic. Finding opportunities within different people’s life experiences to help improve the quality of life in society. These are all big goals that I had never thought about for digital making. But on this day, I learned at least a few from the experts’ stories.

Without listening to the experts’ stories, I could never imagine the life of a person with a disability of mobility. I would never know that a person with a disability of mobility can still go back to the life they used to have. I always felt pity to people who need to move with their wheelchairs or prosthetic legs because I thought that their life would become very inconvenient and lost a lot of fun. However, after hearing Ron and Jenna’s stories, I realized the danger of making assumptions about the life that I had no prior experience.

Ron had fun with wheelchair even after he was able to walk after two years of learning. Jenna was happy with her prosthetic leg that allows her to play volleyball, basketball, and track like everyone else. Arielle started with her idea of 3D printed gloves to her business to working with a charity to make wheelchairs affordable and accessible to people in need in Africa.

After taking away my bias, I realized that there are many people in the world who need us to design products that can solve the misfits that they are currently facing but not realizing. 65 millions of people in the world still do not have access to wheelchairs that they need. There are many things we can design for them to solve their challenges. How could we utilize what’s available to make wheelchairs or other products affordable and accessible to people in need? This question is extremely important for us to consider. When I was thinking about product opportunities, I started to imagine if we could 3D print the wheelchairs locally in their components and assemble the components like how people 3D printed houses. Even though the wheelchairs could be huge, their components are relatively small. As a result, people in poor areas could also 3D print the components and assemble them to serve their needs. This product design idea might not be perfect, but the inspiration I gained from the experts’ stories was material.