Tag: interview

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Creation Station: Week 7

This week was jam-packed as our team visited the Fab Lab, brainstormed potential prototypes, 3D printed our fusion models, met with Jeannette Elliot, and created our first low-fidelity prototypes.

Introduction to the Fab Lab

Our class this week took place in the Fab Lab on campus. The Fab Lab is a maker space that houses designers, makers, and innovators from the campus and the local community. I was blown away by the amount of creativity on display at the Fab Lab. People had let their imagination run wild and were creating anything that came into their head. One of my favorite inventions, was a keyboard made out of wood and copper tape. I was struck by the simplicity and cost-efficiency of the product when compared to typical keyboards. In the Fab Lab, we were split into two groups to learn a little bit more about the various resources. My group worked with arduinos to create a circuit that could turn a lightbulb on and off based on its horizontal or vertical orientation.

  • Example of items lying around the Fab Lab
  • Exterior view of keyboard
  • Interior view of keyboard
  • Inside wall in the Fab Lab

Diverging on Ideas

During the second half of class we split up into our teams to brainstorm potential solutions for the needs we had identified. We were given 4 different prompts to challenge us to think creatively about the problem. At first, I was worried that our group would run out of ideas after the first prompt because I thought there were only a few ways to solve our problem. However, being forced to think about designing our problem for little kids and the elderly forced us to think outside the box and explore new possibilities.

Our design ideas from the brainstorming activity

If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again

After class, I went to the Makerlab to pick up the 3D print of the phone holder I had designed on Fusion 360 during the last class. However, when I got there I was dismayed to see there had been a failure and the top of my phone holder had failed to print. When I talked to the lab assistant about what happened they told me that sometimes prints fail and that I should just try again. Luckily, my phone holder and the box and lid I created were a success the second time through. This taught me a valuable lesson that while 3D printing is very cool it is still an emerging technology and it is not perfect all the time.

  • Failed phone holder print
  • Successful phone holder print
  • Box and lid print

Stakeholder Meeting

Later in the week, my team had a chance to meet with Jeannette Elliot. Jeannette is a physical therapist at DRES and a prosthetic leg user. Our interview with her was very informative and we learned about the struggles she has had in the past with prosthetic leg protective covers. The main takeaways from our conversation were the importance of maintaining flexibility with the cover, keeping the cost affordable, and offering customization options to appeal to the different aesthetic preferences of users. Our team is very thankful that Jeannette took the time to share her insights with us!

Design Time

The week ended with our team making our first low-fidelity prototypes. The 3 designs we chose to prototype were a knee pad attached by velcro, a flexible knee pad attached by a hook and ring strap, and a fabric sleeve with a knee pad encased inside. Our next steps will be to show these designs to Jenna and get her initial feedback.

  • Hook/Ring Strap Prototype
  • Fabric Sleeve Prototype
  • Velcro Knee Pad Prototype
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Learning from the “Firsts”

For me, this week involved a lot of the “firsts.” It was my first time using the Fusion 360 to design and print out an object, first time interviewing an expert user for the project, and my first time not feeling lost about the direction of the project that the team was taking. With the advancements that we have made this week, I feel more confident that we will be able to provide a tangible product that will help our intended users by the end of the project timeline.

Autodesk 360

This week, one of our focus was on learning how to use the Autodesk Fusion 360. As someone who was hoping to learn about 3D designing software such as AutoCAD and be able to create an object through it, this was an exciting topic. In fact, I was so mesmerized by the shapes that were taking form on my screen while doing the first assignment that I forgot that it was to complete up to part one of the videos. Instead, I ended up completing all three videos to create a final product in one sitting even though it took me several hours.

My first attempt at creating an object on Fusion 360

Although it was fun and I enjoyed the process of creating a product on Fusion 360, there were many frustrating moments throughout the assignment. While trying to interact with the interface, I found out how difficult it is to select a very specific area or a part of an object created. Sometimes, it seems like you clicked the correct side or a part of an object but when viewed from a different angle and zoomed in, that may not be the case. It also frustrated me that there were so many lags with the interface. Many of the times when I tried to change the perspective of the view, the interface would lag, testing my patience. Regardless, I am very satisfied with the result and proud of how much I taught myself going through this one assignment.

The practice with Fusion 360 continued in class with Dan Banach from Autodesk leading the workshop. I was extremely happy to find how easy it was to follow him since I already dedicated a lot of time learning the interface. I am usually afraid of using such technical software since I feel that I am slow with technology but this time, I am looking forward to continuing to hone my skill and see where this leads to.

A phone stand created through Fusion 360 during the workshop led by Dan Banach

Interviewing Ryan

This week, our team finally had an opportunity to interview an expert user of a wheelchair. We were privileged to interview Ryan, one of the mentors for the course. With our goal of creating something that will improve the experience of youth wheelchair users, we began to ask him for his stories, especially focusing on his past. He was extremely nice and opened up to us quickly, sharing his stories and emotions that he felt being a wheelchair user since he was young. While sharing the stories, he shared one particular problem that he continues to face as a user of an automated wheelchair: rain getting into the joystick of his chair, leading to a power outage.

Ryan demonstrating his current solution to prevent rain from getting into the joystick of his chair, which is to simply put a plastic bag over the part

With further discussion, we came to the conclusion that it is better for us to focus on something very specific like Ryan’s challenge, rather than something broad like the one that we have been planning on addressing. Although Ryan liked our original idea, he guided us to a different path since we were under a time constraint. Therefore, we will continue to focus on this particular challenge and address it. We also realized that by pursuing this opportunity, we will be able to utilize the technical skills that we are obtaining in class and provide a tangible product by the end, whereas for the other topic, we weren’t sure how that would happen.

Now that our path of the project is a little more clear, we are planning on returning to our plans and activities that we have done in class to modify and adjust accordingly. Although I have always been nervous that our team was behind and unclear about our destination, I now feel much more confident that we will be able to achieve something that will be of help to users like Ryan by the end of the project. This experience confirmed the importance of working with mentors and understanding the perspectives of the users, so we are hoping to set up more interviews with not only Ryan again, but with other users of wheelchairs also. With the new topic in our mind, we have already started visioning what our product would look like, and we are looking forward to where it will lead to!

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Week 5 Reflection

This week was a little different for me–due to unfortunate circumstances, I could not be present in class. Furthermore, I could not look at screens all week, so I had very limited communication with my team members. Due to this, my reflection on this week will be centered around my team’s progress in our research.

My team interviewed our mentor, Jenna, this week. As a reminder, our project is focused on creating a shoe tread to facilitate walking on ice and snow for prosthetic users. Some key takeaways from the interview are:

  1. It is important that the tread is light and easy to attach and detach.
  2. The height added from the tread should be as minimal as possible.
  3. The first prototype should fit to gym shoes, since those tend to be the most comfortable shoes.

In addition to interviewing Jenna, I have conducted some more secondary research. I wanted to start learning more about specific materials and designs for our shoe tread. I came across an article that describes the benefits of winter car tires over all-season tires. From the article, I learned that the rubber material is more important than the tread design. Winter tires are made of a rubber compound that remains soft and flexible in low temperatures, which increases traction. Thus, we need to take this into consideration when choosing a material to create the tread with.

Another article I found shares the best gear for walking in snow and on ice. The article showed a variety of tread materials and designs; some were made of rubber, some of stainless steal and some had sharp spikes while others had small cleats. We will need to decide on tread design and material(s) that are lightweight and create good traction on snow and ice. Lastly, through my secondary research, I also found that it is important that the tread can easily fit into a purse or pocket. This way, anyone can use the tread no matter where they are going.