Tag: opportunities

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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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Preparation Is Key

THE PLAN.

This week, instead of regular class, we had a Pre-Event for our capstone Make-A-Thon event. At this event, we previewed our schedule for the Make-A-Thon weekend and got to meet some new mentors and participants. All three classes participating in the Make-A-Thon were present (which includes Vishal’s Digital Making class of which I am a part of, Dr. McDonagh’s Accessibility + Design course, and Jeff Ginger’s Makerspace seminar). During the night, we had a panel of wheelchair users talk to us about what people with disabilities really wanted out of the Make-A-Thon – a chance for innovators to learn to use empathetic design, include humanizing language in their vocabulary, and create tools which can help make daily living easier. They are not asking us to solve particular “problems” or find “solutions” to the difficult aspects of their lives, rather they want to take the opportunity to collaboratively innovate with us.

The panel itself, included Adam Bleakney (one of our mentors and Coach of U of I’s wheelchair racing track team), Isaac (an U of I freshman), John (an U of I sophomore), Ryan Wilson (an U of I alumnus), and Steve (a representative from Clark-Lindsey). Each member of the panel described to us some frustrations they had with their daily living and helped us understand more about the disabilities they had as well as what sort of innovations they have created as a result.

Below is a picture of what all of John’s socks look like. He has attached three loops because his condition means that he has no grip strength in his hands. With the help of the loops, he is able to independently put his socks on via putting his fingers through the loops!

Additionally, not only did Steve tell us about his own experiences, but he also related to us the experiences of the residents of Clark-Lindsey. Clark-Lindsey is a local retirement community that Steve works at. At Clark-Lindsey, many of the elders have problems such as dementia or pre-Parkinson’s disease which makes some daily living actions difficult, such as walking (and therefore tripping often) or not being able to hold a phone steadily (which makes Facetiming family and grandchildren difficult). Steve talked us through the most common difficulties and proposed that those without a current project help out with some of them. Although I am already working with my team on our attachable treads, one quick idea I had thought of was to use a music stand to help those with trembling hands hold a phone, tablet, or book still for use.

The final part of the Pre-Event had us mingling with the other students as well as the new mentors to create some project ideas. As we already had our own project that we have been working on throughout this semester, my group ended up having a team meeting about the extra research we would need to do in the upcoming days in order to be fully prepared for the Make-A-Thon event. We also talked to a prospective new team member that is a student from Jeff’s Makerspace seminar.

DIGGING AROUND.

Since we did not have a formal workshop class this week as we usually do, I want to also recap some of the other learning that we are doing in class that has not been mentioned before. We have a class forum on a site called Yellowdig where each member of the class can post news articles about the different innovation tools we come across in our lives. This could be extra research on anything we have learned in class that we were particularly interested in or even just articles relating to maker culture and current innovations. In the past week, I have posted a couple interesting articles I have found online. One article was about Odyssey Innovation, a company that makes kayaks out of sea plastic and the other was about Stanford and Apple Watch’s research.

I found these articles interesting for a couple reasons. First, for the article about Odyssey Innovation talked about using a business model as a tool for promoting recycling. While I would like to believe the best of people, the current amount of recycling being done is still not enough – whether this is due to a lack of time, lack or caring, or lack of accessibility. However, if a business model were used, I can see that being enough of a motivator to increase the amount of recycling being done. It is an interesting concept that I think should definitely be explored further by activists.

Next, the Stanford and Apple Watch research was interesting to me in that it is a possible way to make medical information more readily available. While Apple is adamant that their products are not medical grade and therefore cannot give completely accurate results and should not replace doctor’s visits, the application of Apple Watch in sensing irregular heart rates seems to be something that can help discover early indications of heart problems and give users a heads up as to when to visit the doctor. I feel like there could be some really cool applications for the medical field to explore in conjunction with Apple, and I hope that they continue to develop their research.

Finally, one article that my classmate and fellow Solestice teammate, Trevor Sibby, posted was actually about a startup that he is a part of: Nouvo. Nouvo aims to create a smart pacifier that can sense the pH level and temperature of a baby’s saliva in order to help discover problems earlier rather than when symptoms start to show themselves. It is incredibly inspiring to work so closely with someone who is working on technology with such potential.