Tag: mentor

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Week 10 – Preparing for Makeathon

This week, we have moved from the ideation stage and have started our focus on rapid prototyping. Instead of having our regular Wednesday morning class, we had our session on Tuesday evening. Due to conflict with my other course, I was unable to attend the session myself. However, I got updates from friends and teammates about the process and things we covered in the session. The session itself focused on preparing for Makeathon, the event that we are going to participate in a couple of weeks, and we were introduced to resources and opportunities about that event.

The whole session was taken with Dr. McDonagh’s Industrial Design class and Jeff’s Fab Lab class, so our class was able to brainstorm and share ideas with more people. We were also introduced to resources such as the Fab Lab, Makerlab, and Architecture lab; when the Makeathon takes place in the future, we are going to have the opportunities to use resources from those facilities. Furthermore, many old and new mentors came to share their ideas and stories in the class and provided new perspectives to us.

To our group, our focus has been on inventing a glove that could help users grab things easier. We intended it to be applicable for people with limited mobility and not enough arm strength. We hoped the users would be able to overcome the obstacle of not able to eat independently; through using our design, the users could enjoy the food with their friends and families without the help of other people. In the session, our group was introduced to the motion of using the knife and fork. This was something that we didn’t consider before. Previously, we focused on the environment that the users would be in when they used the product. We thought about the configuration of the meal setting including how the utensils were placed nearby the users so that it would be easy for them to start using them. We considered the texture of the glove as well so that the glove would be able to accomplish the task that we wanted it to be able to do. However, we didn’t specifically consider the different types of utensils that the users were going to interact with. We didn’t consider how the features of the utensils would influence the interactions, and how we should design the glove in a way that it could accommodate different types of utensils. In the following weeks, we are going to take this factor into consideration, and build a glove that could be more user-friendly.

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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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Fab Lab Round 2

Fabrication

We returned to the Fab Lab to continue learning about different types of fabrication! Last week, I created a circuit that made an LED light illuminate. This time, I had the opportunity to design the surface of a watch for outpatients who are required to perform exercises like bicep curls and twisting their wrist.

First prototype of the watch that will track movements during the patient’s rehabilitation exercises.

The watch is made of 3 pieces of wood. The top piece can spin by 90 degrees in order to detect the movements for the 2 different exercises. We were first tasked with designing the top of the watch, so users would know which way to spin the watch while performing each exercise. Utilizing the software program, Inkscape, I drew 1 arrow on the top of the watch along with the text, “TWIST,” and another arrow on the bottom of the watch with the text, “CURL.” Thus, the user would know which way to spin the watch when performing hand twists versus bicep curls.

Here you can see me practicing using Inkscape.

After designing the surface of the watch, we sewed straps for the watch. Using sewing machines, we first practiced on a sheet of fabric to get used to the machine. Once we got the hang of it, we began sewing the straps for our watches. We initially sewed the strap inside-out, then use a stick to help turn it right-side-out. Lastly, we sewed velcro onto the strap so the watch user can adjust it to the size of their wrist. You can see pictures of the process below!

  • Practicing sewing on a plain sheet of fabric.
  • Line we followed when sewing on the plain fabric.
  • Turning the strap right-side-out with the stick.
  • Learning to sew with classmates!

Project Progress

During the second half of class, each team took turns presenting our project to 2 of our mentors, Milestone Labs and Adam Bleakney. We shared the progress we have made since we first spoke with them. From our conversation, we realized that we need to narrow down our topic and start conducting more secondary research on what already exists for shoe treads and attachments. Also, it is necessary for us to speak more with Jenna, our user, about her desired experience with the tread, i.e. if she would need to sit down when taking the tread on and off. From here, we are going to conduct more secondary research and speak with a Materials Science professor, physical therapist, and a shoe maker so we can gain insight on where we would like to focus our project.