Rather than having our regular class time, we attended an introduction to the Make-a-thon this week. In this session, we learned about the schedule of the Make-a-thon, the tools available during the Make-a-thon, and the prize. More importantly, we got a chance to learn the stories of more mentors and learn how we should think about the larger target user base other than just the mentor we are working with. In addition, we got a chance to interview and connect with these mentors at the end. Through this chance, we gain additional inspiration from these mentors.
Inspiration from more mentors
During this session, we met Adam and Ryan, but we also met new mentors, including John, Isiah, and Steve. They brought their stories and how they adapt to the struggles they once faced. In addition, Steve brought the stories and the needs of residents living in Clark Lindsey as well. Learning about the needs of residents living in Clark Lindsey, I found that there is a huge need for fall prevention, and this is very similar to my team’s pursuant in designing a product that can help people improve balance during yoga practices and can potentially expand the user base to people who may experience balance issues in their every-day life.
Changes in ideas
Initially, my team has the idea of designing a yoga prosthetic to replace the prosthetic for daily usage for amputees because there are running prosthetic and ballet prosthetic in the market, and a yoga prosthetic may help amputees as well. However, with the thinking of increasing the user base in mind, we are also considering whether we should design an attachment instead now. But when the product wants to reach a greater user base other than amputees who love practicing yoga only, we will need to consider how the attachment can be easily attached and not create any misfits in people’s life.
Having this in mind, we asked Steve a few questions during the session on whether he thinks an outside attachment people’s leg may help in maintaining people’s balance. His answer was that it depends on people’s diagnosis because if people do not have the strength to walk, an attachment may not be enough to help in fall prevention.
Things to do in the future
With this constraint in mind, my team will need further discussion on the feasibility and functionality of the idea of an attachment, how we can make small changes to our ideas to fit the need of a larger user base, and whether we should focus on fitting the need of the smaller user base (amputees who practicing yoga or people who want to practice yoga) for now. Moving forward, we will need to create more low fidelity prototypes to test out our ideas and the functionality of the design.
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.
Hi Yingyi,
I think that this weeks pre-event to the Make-a-thon was super beneficial. We got to meet new experts and hear some very interesting insights of potential areas of opportunity. Areas of interest that many of us may not have even thought of before.
I also really like the insight you got from speaking with these users. They bring a lot of value and fresh ideas. You and your team are in the right direction keep progressing.
Hi Yingyi,
I am glad to hear that you and your team are thinking of ways to reach out to a larger user base with your idea! I think it will be more challenging to cater to the larger user base just because it opens up so many variabilities, but I believe that your product will help many people with the balance issues, making it worthwhile. Like you mentioned above, since fall prevention is a big thing at Clark Lindsey, it may be helpful to ask them to find out how they help with it or how the residents ensure that they do not fall. Although this is not directly applicable to the opportunity that your team has identified, it might spark an idea to keep your team going. I’m looking forward to seeing what your team come up with!
Hi Yingyi,
I think it’s great that you are looking at expanding your user base. Have you done any research on different leg prosthetics? Is it possible to create an attachment that could fit all types of prosthetics? You should check out this article I found about an amputee yoga instructor: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-4391514/Amputee-yoga-teacher-shows-practice.html. She briefly mentions how she had to change the prosthetic she uses in order to have more balance in certain poses.