Tag: week 10

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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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Make-A-Thon Pre-night Meeting

On Tuesday, we had a meeting with all the students who will attend Make-A-Thon. Some of them are from the art class and a few people are from a class in Fablab. Lots of them are actually art and design major students. I didn’t expect there would be other students from another college attending the Make-A-Thon. I think it would be really interesting by having such a diverse participant. Definitely, this will make sure that the products we’ll make in the Make-A-Thon will be more creative and effective.

After the meeting, we get the chance talking to some guest speakers and mentors. Saloni and I interviewed one of the guest speaker who’s also a wheelchair user. We asked about his situation and we found that our ideas of gloves don’t really help him that much since he can hold certain things and use them effectively. Later on, we found a challenge that it’s hard for him to cut the meat into pieces. He is using a special knife which cost lots of energy to be utilized. It might be a great opportunity for us to think about if there’s any specific problems like this waiting there to be solved. We might gain more insights and ideas by focusing on those specific challenge. He also talked about his socks with special loop which can help him put it on his feet. I found this is a really innovative idea.

We also meet another student from the class in Fablab, and we introduced our product to him. I can tell he’s really good at critical thinking and he really came up with lots of ideas that suggest us that we might also can think about other opportunities but not just focus on our current idea. Through the conversation with the guest speaker and the student, we also discovered a new challenge which is it’s really difficult for the guest speaker to put on a watch by himself. The student mentioned magnetic watch, however the guest speaker said sometimes it might stick to the wheels when he rolls the wheels of his wheelchair. This provide us a whole new idea to explore.

At last, we asked the student to join our team and provide more advice to our project. I really look forward to collaborate with him in next few weeks. He also knows more technical skills using the equipments in the Fablab, and I believed that this will expand our ideas with barriers of the difficulties in operating different machines. I hope we can come up with a more comprehensive idea of our project and start working on it.

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Preparing for the Make-A-Thon

This week we met with other students who are also going to be participating in the Make-A-Thon. We also got to hear people in the community as well as more potential mentors speak to us. While we were interviewing our users with mentioning or idea for the glove, we found a new challenge of being able to use a knife to cut and a fork at the same time. It requires a lot of force on food like tough meat and the plate tends to slip away. This was interesting for us to learn because we were just focused on a glove that helps with grabbing things, but this was a new opportunity space that we haven’t thought about.

My friend Brandon who works in Beckwith recommended a student to talk to about grabbing things, so we might still interview him this week if we believe that is the direction we want to go in. There seem to be many opportunities now and it is hard to decide on the one we want to pursue.

Another opportunity that came with talking to one of the users John, was that he cannot wear a watch, but would love to. John has Charcot Marie Tooth. This affects both motor and sensory nerves. He has trouble with buttons and zippers, and would appreciate something that would help him deal with them as well as stylish. This discovery about the watch idea came from the student pictured above asking him about it. He had the opportunity to try a strap for a watch that was magnetic, but that interfered with his wheels when he was pushing them forward. I think this is an area that I want to pursue more, because it not only excited John but it also seems feasible.

I got the number of the guy pictured above so we could work with him during the Make-A-Thon, but unfortunately I don’t remember his name. I am hoping to figure that out soon in order to see if he has thought about his watch idea more.

Next steps include interviewing the student Brandon suggested to see if we want to finalize pursuing the glove idea and figuring out who the student pictured above is to contact him before the Make-A-Thon.