This week we get the chance to learn how to use Fusion 360. Our guest speaker Dan Banach from the Autodesk gave us a great workshop about introducing how to use this application and leading us to build our own phone holder. At first, I had no clue of how it works. I had some experience in using editing application such as Lightroom and Final Cut. Since Autodesk is also from the Adobe, I thought it’s gonna be similar with those apps. However, I was wrong about it. This was definitely a brand new experience to me. Throughout the process, I got lost a few times. My teammates and Dan came to help me a few times, and they helped me to finish my phone holder.
Dan’s introducing Autodesk Initial state: Drafting the surface
To be honest, by learning how to use Autodesk Fusion 360, I found it really helped us to put our thoughts into reality. Sometimes we only come up with simple thoughts and ideas, but we didn’t really have more specific information about our products. By learning more and more technical skills of designing, we can put our ideas into the app and model it. Also, we can actually print them and test it out, since the plastic material is not too expensive. No matter speaking from expense or environment side, Fusion 360 and the 3D printers benefit us a lot. I’m really interested in next week’s activity in Fablab. Hope we can learn something that can help us to get closer to our product.
Working on itPhone Holder with wood material
During the How Might We assignment, our group came up with three insights:
How might we create a way for wheelchair-users to see what’s behind them?
How might we create a way for wheelchair-users to grab some object more independently?
How might we design an affordable assistive tool?
I was kinda freak out about our progress, since I thought that we didn’t actually have a specific idea about which area we should focus on. However, my teammates and TA encouraged me that we were still at the stage of brainstorming and working on this question. I realized that we need to conduct more interviews with more wheelchair-user and find out what is the most feasible and helpful plan that we can work on. Probably, Arielle’s suggestions would be helpful. We might need to try to make an appointment with her in the next week. I hope we can have more progress on our project and get more familiar with deigning applications and skills.
For me, this week involved a lot of the “firsts.” It was my first time using the Fusion 360 to design and print out an object, first time interviewing an expert user for the project, and my first time not feeling lost about the direction of the project that the team was taking. With the advancements that we have made this week, I feel more confident that we will be able to provide a tangible product that will help our intended users by the end of the project timeline.
Autodesk 360
This week, one of our focus was on learning how to use the Autodesk Fusion 360. As someone who was hoping to learn about 3D designing software such as AutoCAD and be able to create an object through it, this was an exciting topic. In fact, I was so mesmerized by the shapes that were taking form on my screen while doing the first assignment that I forgot that it was to complete up to part one of the videos. Instead, I ended up completing all three videos to create a final product in one sitting even though it took me several hours.
My first attempt at creating an object on Fusion 360
Although it was fun and I enjoyed the process of creating a product on Fusion 360, there were many frustrating moments throughout the assignment. While trying to interact with the interface, I found out how difficult it is to select a very specific area or a part of an object created. Sometimes, it seems like you clicked the correct side or a part of an object but when viewed from a different angle and zoomed in, that may not be the case. It also frustrated me that there were so many lags with the interface. Many of the times when I tried to change the perspective of the view, the interface would lag, testing my patience. Regardless, I am very satisfied with the result and proud of how much I taught myself going through this one assignment.
The practice with Fusion 360 continued in class with Dan Banach from Autodesk leading the workshop. I was extremely happy to find how easy it was to follow him since I already dedicated a lot of time learning the interface. I am usually afraid of using such technical software since I feel that I am slow with technology but this time, I am looking forward to continuing to hone my skill and see where this leads to.
A phone stand created through Fusion 360 during the workshop led by Dan Banach
Interviewing Ryan
This week, our team finally had an opportunity to interview an expert user of a wheelchair. We were privileged to interview Ryan, one of the mentors for the course. With our goal of creating something that will improve the experience of youth wheelchair users, we began to ask him for his stories, especially focusing on his past. He was extremely nice and opened up to us quickly, sharing his stories and emotions that he felt being a wheelchair user since he was young. While sharing the stories, he shared one particular problem that he continues to face as a user of an automated wheelchair: rain getting into the joystick of his chair, leading to a power outage.
Ryan demonstrating his current solution to prevent rain from getting into the joystick of his chair, which is to simply put a plastic bag over the part
With further discussion, we came to the conclusion that it is better for us to focus on something very specific like Ryan’s challenge, rather than something broad like the one that we have been planning on addressing. Although Ryan liked our original idea, he guided us to a different path since we were under a time constraint. Therefore, we will continue to focus on this particular challenge and address it. We also realized that by pursuing this opportunity, we will be able to utilize the technical skills that we are obtaining in class and provide a tangible product by the end, whereas for the other topic, we weren’t sure how that would happen.
Now that our path of the project is a little more clear, we are planning on returning to our plans and activities that we have done in class to modify and adjust accordingly. Although I have always been nervous that our team was behind and unclear about our destination, I now feel much more confident that we will be able to achieve something that will be of help to users like Ryan by the end of the project. This experience confirmed the importance of working with mentors and understanding the perspectives of the users, so we are hoping to set up more interviews with not only Ryan again, but with other users of wheelchairs also. With the new topic in our mind, we have already started visioning what our product would look like, and we are looking forward to where it will lead to!
This week we had class at a different location than the usual
Illinois MakersLab. Prior to class, we were instructed to go to the Psychology Building.
Initially, I was not sure the reason behind and was intrigued about it but soon
I realized that we were going to learn to use a designing software called
Fusion 360 and I was really excited about it.
To get us to warm up a little bit before we dive straight
into Fusion 360 in class, Professor Sachdev assigned us a small assignment to let
us learn the basics of Fusion 360. Even though the assignment was only to
design a simple box within Fusion 360, I found it somehow challenging as I had no
prior experience in Fusion 360. So, it to me quite a bit of effort and time to
get familiar with the interface of the software and later complete the
assignment. It was to my surprise that such a simple design gave me so much
feeling of accomplishment.
In class, we had the honor of inviting Dan Banach from AutoDesk
to teach us to fully utilize the power of Fusion 360 to create functional
products. For me, the workshop provided by Dan was extremely useful as it took
me a shorter time period to design an actual product versus when I was trying
to learn the software myself designing a simple box. Dan’s clear instructions
and humor really helped us fully grasp the magic of Fusion 360 and I am excited
to see what my group, 3DBal, can design with the software. Everybody was able
to design a phone holder with their own unique design. If I were to pick a key
takeaway from the lecture, it would no doubt be: “When in doubt, click the
right key on Fusion369” as emphasized by Dan multiple times during lecture.
Learning the Shorcuts on Fusion 360Final Phone Holder Design
Since my group has had a pretty clear direction since the
beginning of our project, we did not find the project idealization as helpful
as the other groups. It did help us narrow our direction and focus our
research. We also conducted further interviews with other users and yoga
instructors to get even more ideas on our product.
This week we had an assignment in Autodesk Fusion 360, and then worked on creating a phone holder together in class. I ended up working on the Autodesk pre-assignment on a school computer because it was slowly loading on my computer and taking a really long time to open. Thus during this workshop I had a similar experience, as my computer was taking the longest time to open it up.
Dan Banach did a really great job leading this workshop, because he went slowly and taught us shortcuts. Because my computer was being very slow it was very hard for me to follow along int the beginning because I couldn’t do the steps with him as he was doing them like the rest of the class was.
I was stuck on these screen for a long time as it was taking a long time to load
I got assistance because it was taking so long to load, and eventually got into the software. Because I joined late I wasn’t able to model it exactly to how everyone else was modeling it, but I still got to play around with material and some of the visual design elements of how to make it look within the software. I also I think there are a lot of fun tools on fusion 360 and am excited to use it to model the designs we make in this course!
Next we worked on How Might We statements. My group decided on a central theme around Independence, and had 3 sub-themes of Tools & Attachments, Vision, and Affordability.
The 3 How Might We statements that came from our sub-themes are the following:
How Might We create a way for wheelchair users to see what is behind them?
How might we create a way for wheelchair users to grab heavy or hard to grab items easier and independently?
How Might Design an affordable assistive tool?
I think our last How Might We will be a sub-theme of whatever we create, because affordability is something we want to be part of our product no matter what. As we keep moving along in the design process it is hard to not jump to what is and isn’t possible in terms of design, but we know it is important to try not to think of the final product right now and just trust the process.
In terms of future plans, we are hoping to interview my friend who works in Beckwith this week, bringing our first two How Might We’s to him and seeing what he thinks. Also speaking to him can lead to insights of what he helps the residents with and some of the challenges he sees everyday.
This week was all about learning how to use the 3D modeling platform Fusion 360 from Autodesk. Our first task was to build the box from this video on our own before class. I had some experience with a 3D modeling software called Sketch Up from a previous class, but I still found my initial pass at building a model in Fusion 360 to be a bit harder than I thought. My biggest problem was not fully understanding the shortcut keys. I had trouble orienting the screen’s viewpoint how I wanted until I learned that holding shift allowed me to move the structure with my trackpad.
In class, we were lucky to have Dan Banach from Autodesk come in and take us through a Fusion 360 tutorial. We were designing a custom-made phone holder. This model was much more complex than the box we originally had to make, but Dan did a great job walking us through it step by step. He also showed us a bunch of really helpful quick key shortcuts that made the making process much more streamlined. Through creating the phone holder we learned how to build shapes, extrude surfaces, measure distances, and change colors and materials of surfaces. In the end, my finished model turned out much better than I thought it would at the start of class. After building the phone holder, we rendered it and exported a file that we could print in the Maker Lab. I went to the Maker Lab on friday to print the phone holder and I am excited to use it when I pick it up on Monday
A rendered version of my Fusion 360 phone holder.
Human Centered Design Activity
After learning how to use Fusion 360, we continued our Human Centered Design activity from last week. First, we reviewed all of the needs that we identified and the groupings we put them in. Our next step was to break down the groupings into “How Might We Statements”. The main focus of these statements was to organize our group’s thoughts and fully identify our direct need. We had some difficulty making our “How Might We Statements” because they could not be too general or specific. Our statements mainly centered around the protection of Jenna’s leg and also giving her more customization and mobility than her current prosthetic covering.
Looking Forward
Overall it was a very informative week and I am excited to start working in the Fab Lab next class!
Prior to this week’s class, we had a pre-class assignment that introduces us to the Fusion 360. The video we needed to watch guided us, step by step, in creating a box assembly. I followed the steps and created a part of the box assembly. I found that the shapes with the shortcut keys are extremely useful and fast when we are using fusion 360 as compared to the tinkercad.com.
In this week’s class, we had a guest speaker from the Autodesk coming in to teach us how to use fusion 360. We had a hands-on experience of creating 3D models using fusion 360. The guest speaker led us through designing our own cell phone holder step by step. I was very excited about this type of hands-on experience because the hands-on experience is when we can actually learn how to use the different types of software and technology for our project and our future use. I believe that this learning session of 3D modeling will be very useful for our team when we get into the designing and prototyping stage for our project.
Fusion360 3D Modeling & Printing Record
“How might we …” – Question Generation
In the later one-third of the class, we went back to generating insights for our project. We selected three of the major themes that we decided are important in defining our challenge. Then we selected three insights under each theme we identified. According to these insights, we converged to the most important three and formulated a “How might we …” question for each of the insights. All of these questions aggregated together help us define our major challenge and what we need to work toward. I think this activity of design thinking makes us form a better understanding of our intended users as well as the challenge because we were able to brainstorm all the insights we have and aggregate them to form meaningful themes. Through these meaningful themes, we were able to organize what we observed to what we need to solve in reality.
At the end of this design thinking activity, we (our team) come to the conclusion that we need to design a product that will both help the users with prosthetic leg both be able to keep their stability and have the ability to slide. This product needs to help during standing poses (yoga) and not get in the users’ way during the grand poses. Since the product is designing for users with a prosthetic leg, one of the most important ideas is that the users want to look normal and not be different from others. Then designing a product that can both help a prosthetic user stay in balance and be subtle during classes to not draw attention would be extremely important.
Continuing with our project, we will continue to try to reach out to the experts and organizations we found online for the research. We hope to gain more insights to help us generate more ideas and understand our challenge better by continuing with our research. I am also looking forward to learning the tools we have access to and having hands-on experience on the tools in the fab lab starting next week.
I am a student who’s currently studying accountancy and management of information systems. I am graduating this year and entering the MAS program at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I love programming and accountancy as much as I love taking photographs and learning how to play the Rubik’s cube. I love trying out new things and learning new skills. Learning how to make accessible designs utilizing digital making skills is one of the new skills I learned.
This week we focused on the CAD software, specifically Autodesk Fusion 360. Prior to class this week we learned quick shortcuts and the basic fundamental of parametric designing. Dan Banach, education program manager at autodesk, gave an immersive presentation of the world of Fusion 360. He has more than 30 years of Fusion 360 knowledge. He was there from the very start. It all started with a 3D model of a five and quarter sized floppy disk. Dan also simply broke down the ideology of the cloud product innovative software Fusion 360, into three main components: use, design, and make. After his intro we had the task of going through a tutorial of creating a phone charging stand. This helped us get even more familiar with the functions and capabilities of the software.
Dan Banach during the Fusion 360 Workshop
I myself have some knowledge and previous with CAD. However its with solidworks, which is a lot different from Fusion 360. You have similar capabilities, but solidworks is far more complicated. I like how simplified Fusion makes computer aided design. The shortcuts and keys were super easy to pick up on and the drop down menus house every function. Solidworks took me some time to get a stable grip on. Both softwares are great in their own respective ways. Regardless of which a person chooses you’ll still get a understanding of not only parametrics but design thinking. The software gives you a different method of approaching problems and design decisions. The simplest thing from a curve to the material itself of the product all attribute to the overall product.
My final design and render of the phone charging stand
After the Fusion Workshop ended we were given another on “How to Statements” from our TA Mehmet Aydin. This activity allowed us to further explore the centralized themes within our ideas. After choosing the top three themes, which we wrote out in concise sentences, we created a how to statement. Essentially staging a question of how were were going to do some of the things we sought out to solve. Like mentioned in last week’s presentation his is a cycle within the design process. We came to conclusions last week, but this exercise allowed us to revisited, rethink, and revitalize some of those ideas. I feel like now we have a pretty concret grip on the opportunity and the market in which we’re trying to infiltrate.
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