Tag: Week 3

This week we didn’t have actual class due to the strong snow storm and extremely low temperature, but we had an online class instead.

For the pre-class section, I go through the HCD online courses. I found that I should work on different angels when I face to some problems. Since I haven’t got the chance to meet with my group member, I’m not familiar about our project. I hope that I can learn more about and contribute more to the our group project. We’ll probably meet before Wednesday’s class.

During the class, I learned about lots of teams’ goals, inspiration, and their projects. I was really impressed by such a lot of amazing perspectives. Seeing lots of classmates holding lots of great ideas and their passion, I feel really confident about helping others by making efforts to reach our goals. I’m really glad that we have Milestone such a great guider for us to provide feedbacks and improve our projects. We should focus more on our targeted group in the following weeks.

I’m really confident about making our project better and better. I hope that we can come up with more ideas after we had the group meeting. Since I joined this course a week ago, I hope that I can figure out everything about our project and this course. I’ll cooperate with my group member and try my best to help them.

My group chose to highlight two of the experts, Ron and Ryan. Through our presentation we didn’t have that big of a solid grasp of an opportunity area, and wanted to engage in more conversation. Luckily we were able to listen to some of the answers Ryan gave to the questions Adam asked, which ultimately helped us decide on our opportunity area.

Ryan talked about how he wasn’t really able to do video interviews, as there was no way for him to set up a heavy camera by himself. This made us thinking about and attachable tripod to the wheelchair that could assist in an interview setting. This insight helped us think in an even broader sense of multitasking. The final opportunity described in one sentence is listed below:

How can we can improve the ability to multitask for people with limited mobility in their arms or are in wheelchairs.

Getting to this statement is really exciting because we weren’t really sure of a set opportunity area in the beginning of class or even when we were presenting. It was interesting to see what other groups were able to come up with as well, and how groups have chosen to focus on different areas.

Going forward I think we should interview the experts to see in what situations they multitask, as well as do research on common multitasking situations. We can also do research on tools that are used if someone can’t use their hands, as if a wheelchair user is using their hands to move forward, they won’t be available to do other tasks.

I am excited to keep working on this opportunity and see where it leads us!

Learning From the Experts

Class went on as scheduled this week, even in the midst of the polar vortex sweeping across the Midwest. The class started with learning the logistics of the video chat software we were using, and after that, we moved into a presentation by representatives from Milestone Studios. One of the main points I took away from their presentation was how important it was to design a product that would actually be useful for the user. They told a story of a product they had worked on in the past for a user who was blind. In their initial brainstorm stage, they designed a prototype headgear motion sensor that would help their partner move around her apartment. However, when they talked with her they found that she had little trouble moving around her apartment, but what she really struggled with was not knocking her yogurt over when eating it. They were able to develop a simple yogurt stabilizing base that helped solve her problem and improved her quality of life. This tangible example helped underscore the importance of Human-Centered Design and interviews in the design process.

Assessing Our Ideas

After the presentation from Milestone Studios, each team presented on a few of their potential ideas and the mentors they wanted to work with. I had come in with the assumption that many of the teams would have noticed the same problems as our team and brainstormed similar solutions. However, I was pleasantly surprised by the variety of the needs seen and the potential ideas given to address them. After sharing our thoughts, we broke back up into teams to think more critically about our ideas using the Challenge Definition. I really appreciated this exercise because it forced us to define our opportunity and our solution. Working with Jenna and the members of Milestone Studios we were able to define our opportunity statement as “We want to protect Jenna’s leg, while still maintaining or even improving her full range of motions.” This statement challenges us not just to protect Jenna’s knee, but also make sure we are not providing her a solution that limits her in some other way. Doing this will ensure that Jenna will actually use our solution instead of forgoing it because of any other negative effects it might have. Overall, this class was very informative and it was great working with the representatives from Milestone Studies!