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.
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!
Salutations! I’m a sophomore studying accountancy who likes to create some art on the side (yes, I’m one of those photographer/poet/all around artist people). My passion is in advocating for equity, and I probably spend a little too much time on Hulu.
I am a part of Team Solestice with Trevor Sibby and Emma Bradford.
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