Pre Class
Week 3. This week to me is kind of mind-blowing. Starting from the pre-class readings, I started to feel regret of the previous group interview. With the time constraint, I did not get a chance to ask more in-depth questions as I would like to have a more in-depth understanding of the mentors’ experiences. I did not capture most of the things I see through photo during the site visit. Prior to reading the HCD reading, I did not notice the importance of capturing the things I see, hear, feel, smell and taste during the site visit. But I think there things that I did well from the previous week that allows me to define the opportunities from experts’ experiences, including listening patiently and taking good notes of mentors’ inspiring experiences that I heard. When there is a chance for us to have a more in-depth interview again with the expert who we are working with, I would start to apply the techniques I read from the reading to deepen my understanding of the situation and better define the opportunities available.
Milestone Labs Workshop
With the extreme weather of the past week, unfortunately, our face-to-face class time is canceled. Instead, we had an interesting online session. I really love how the consultants from the Milestone Labs guided us through the steps for design thinking to inspire us to get to our final opportunity statement. Starting with the discussion of the unmet social needs, I was shocked by how we, people, are so creative in overcoming the small problems that come into our lives and how simple the solution can be. Without complicated technology, each one of us can find a very simple solution to the challenges we faced during our daily lives. During the brainstorming session, I thought of something that I usually do when I am drinking hot water with a glass. I did not have any cup holders at home. When I wanted to drink hot water or tea, the cup got very hot. To solve this problem, I just grabbed a tissue to serve the purpose of a cup holder. The tissue absorbed some of the heat, so my hand did not get burned when I was holding the cup. I was so shocked when I thought of my real life example. I never realized, prior to this class session, that I was so creative in the way of making simple solutions to overcome my daily challenges.
After the brainstorming of unmet needs, we shared our desired mentors as a team. Before class, we were struggling in choosing a mentor and narrowing the opportunities down to one. During the presentation, we were inspired by the consultants from the Milestone Labs who seemed very excited about our idea of making a product that improves the balance of people with a prosthetic leg for recreational use, particularly in yoga, that can also expand to daily usage. Therefore, we went forward with defining this single opportunity. Going through the opportunity worksheet, we finally got to a single sentence opportunity statement:
To create an extension for prosthetic legs to increase balance, particularly in yoga.
Our idea of getting a surface area extension to help with balancing with the prosthetic leg is new that I did not find any related products online, but I found some benefits of doing yoga to people with prosthetic legs (you may click on this link to view more information regarding the benefits). With the benefits of yoga and our product to help make the more practices in yoga possible for people with prosthetic legs, we can encourage people with prosthetic legs to practice yoga and gain confidence in working out. I am excited with the opportunity we defined, and I hope to bring this idea to reality to encourage people with prosthetic legs to practice yoga and other excercises.
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, your post is pretty insightful for me. Using the tissue to hold glass seems simple, but is an excellent way to solve the problem. I was struggling to come up with an example when we did the activity in class. Reading your post, I realize I did a similar thing when I tried to hold hot stuff in bowls; I use a towel to wrap the bowl. This reminded me that I should not neglect behaviors and actions in life. Being negligence would prevent me from seeing the opportunities in life, and I should be more mindful about every moment.