Tag: Week 2

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Week 2 Reflection

I registered BADM357 a week ago. Therefore, I didn’t get the chance to visit DRES. However, after reading all the materials and everyone else’s blog, I realized this course can provide us lots of opportunities to explore more. I would never have a chance to visit DRES if I don’t take this class, and I would never know mentors’ fantastic stories and how those athletes train their bodies. By sharing personal experience to each other, we can gain more knowledge in different fields and we can learn more about others as a person.

By reading through other students’ posts, I found out that 3D printing techniques are benefiting lots of people in need, such as the 3D printed gloves. It makes me feel more inspired and more stimulated to learn about different techniques, such as modeling, 3D printing, and prototyping, in order to help other people and make their life better.

Even though I did’t go the first two weeks’ classes, I’m trying to catch up you guys’ pace. I’m really excited to do something that would help others. I’m also really looking forward to cooperating with my teammates and reach our goals. Hope we can have a good time!

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Week 2 Reflection

Before taking BADM 357, most of the classes I have attended before only required me to follow instructions and memorize the materials carefully. Never was I asked to be creative or innovative in any of my accounting courses. Instead, I was usually asked to as compliant as possible in class. So, I decided to take this class in order to challenge the creative and innovative aspect of my skill set and to get my hands on a new technology that will enabled to turn my ideas into reality. I knew at the moment that I stepped in to the Illinois MakerLab that this course was going to bring be a unique experience unlike any other classes I have taken before. It did not take long for the course for it to bring me new experiences.

In the second class, I not only traveled to a part of campus that I have previously never been to, but I also set foot in a building for the first time. For the entire class time, we visited the DRES building and met with our course mentors to listen their experiences and to brainstorm ideas according to their requests. Ryan, Adam, Ron, and Jenna all have their own unique stories while having different requests. One common theme throughout their requests is around affordability of the product to its users. It is very common that a cutting-edge technology is introduced to the general population but in order for it to be actually useful it has to be affordable to most people. From this experience, I have learned that the key takeaway Professor Sachdev wants us to have is to use our ability and skills to create something that will improve someone’s experience of life by a certain margin but not necessary to an extent that it will be life changing for them.

The experiences from the DRES visit was inspirational to say the least. It was interesting to hear from people that lived their lives from a different perspective and exciting how my ideas can potentially be incorporated in all our lives and experience the overall experiences. The most impressive part of the visit that I found was how an actual project from the class few years back has now become a fully functional business and his creating and delivering products to improve people live around the world. Even more, the products can be catered to all customer need and are extremely affordable. I look forward to work with the mentors for the rest of the semester and I hope that my ideas can eventually come to fruition and leave positive impacts in some people’s lives.

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Week 2 Reflection –Inspiration at DRES

In week two, we met our mentors at DRES (Disability Resources and Educational Services). As I visited DRES and heard mentors’ stories, I was touched by many points.
The first thing that stood out to me was the mindset of this course. We called those people who were going to participate in our projects mentors instead of users. This seemed to be a small wording difference, but it implied different meanings: through the projects that we are going to work on for the semester, we are not working towards helping people who have needs or need our help; instead, we are learning from the experts who have more experiences than us. This is something that I have not thought about. Previous to this class, I have taken some marketing classes and a design thinking course, whenever we talked about the targets, we were using words such as users or customers. Although we talked about the importance of customization and strived for tailoring the ideas, products or services to the targets, we were using the mindset that those people need us to fulfill their unmet needs and wants. This made me ignore the fact that those people had more experiences than me in their lives. As I saw the athletes training, I realized that they were stronger and more perseverant than me, and what I am aiming to do should be learning from their experiences and coming up with something that can radically impact someone rather than some minor modifications that don’t matter much to people.

Another thing that moved me was the evolvement of the sports chair. In the room that athletes conducted training, I saw previous versions of sports chair hanging on the ceiling. I was surprised to see how the sports chair changed from very similar to the everyday chair to distinct from the everyday chair. Living in modern life, it seemed natural to me that what people used should be useful and excellent. Seeing all the sports chair reminded me that Rome was not built in one day; what we experienced today resulted from many people’s time and efforts. Just like the “iterate, iterate, and iterate” mindset in human-centered design, I should continually think of ways to improve the work to enhance people’s life. The sports chair also reminded me of the significance of “empathy,” another mindset of human-centered design. Adam, one mentor of our course, shared with us the story of how sports chair evolved throughout the years. In the beginning, the sports chair was designed by companies that didn’t consider the needs of the athletes. Thus, the sports chair had many issues that were not user-friendly. It was athletes who were using the chair pushed the design to be more friendly and useful. When I design in the future, I should always remember stepping in others’ shoes and empathizing with other people’s perspectives.

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If It’s Not Broke, Use It To Create Something New

Walking the same path I’ve anxiously trudged many a time before, I felt a little bit disappointed. I had signed up for this digital making course to learn new things and find ways to stay curious in my field. Yet, everything we had done so far was so familiar to me: the slight sweat building up from the far walk to the DRES testing center, the awkward stillness of its lobby, and quickly redirected glances to avoid eye contact with the strangers you’ve been thrown together with in the class; all of this was familiar. What was unfamiliar was our descent from the first floor to the wheelchair sports training room and the brief retelling of the history of wheelchair sports told to us by our mentor, Adam. What was unfamiliar was learning about how someone who had taken the same class as us mere years ago now had a multinational company whose product had made a significant impact on sports technology. It was incredible learning each individual mentor’s story and the way they made the most out of what they had, using existing technology in unique ways to not just make a profit, but make an impact. Hearing about Jenna and Ron’s struggle to become an athlete, I couldn’t help but relate to the yearning they experienced, having had to stop my own sport, track, due to chronic shin splints.

An idea for using track spikes and rubber soles to create a lighter shoe with traction came from Jenna’s trouble with the black ice on campus.

This is all to say that the whole experience of interviewing experts with experience in disability related products was an especially empathetic and inspiring experience for me. Throughout the course of the interviews, their emphasis on affordability and accessibility inspired many ideas in me to help solve not only problems they brought up about physical disabilities but also problems that my friends and I – who have mental disabilities – experience daily. Given the stigma against such disabilities, the budget constraints of helpful projects tend to be lacking; what really sparked my brain in the interview was all the ways that the experts we talked to innovated creatively through utilizing existing objects and ideas to create solutions to completely unrelated problems. As a business major interested in consulting, this emphasis in cost effective innovative solutions is a particularly interesting mentality that I will carry with me into future problem-solving situations. I had been thinking of innovation in terms of creating new things completely from scratch, but moving forward, I will be keeping the ideal of adapting old inventions to newer and more modern, salient products.