In last week’s class, I’m glad that we had Mike Hansen, employee from EarthSense, to come down to the Makerlab and share his experience with us. It’s really inspiring that his company is working on developing robots for agricultural use. I didn’t expect that they put in so much efforts to invent such a lot of different models, and they also need to come up with the best one suitable for their customers. They would also do some customization for different needs from their customers. I find this is a really good idea, because in our group project we also need to consider that the targeted group of people may have different needs and purposes of using our products. This inspired me to explore an idea that can contribute to a more flexible product. Big thank you to Mike for sharing his valuable experience.
Later on, we came up with a team name “Blueprint”, and we designed our team’s logo and started printing it. Actually it’s my first time using a 3D-printer. I thought we would do it by hand, but it seems like after we design the logo in the software it would just do it automatically, which is really convenient and efficient.
Last Friday, our team went to Nugent Hall in order to seek for interviewing the director of Beckwith program. However, we didn’t had his contact information, so we didn’t make an appointment. He was probably off work when we got there. Therefore, we decided to asked for residences who passed by if they’re willing to give us some time to conduct a quick interview. Fortunately, Selina Lee, a Latin major student, decide to helped us. During the interview, we did realize and understand that there are some difficulties that she’s facing everyday. For example, she said it’s really hard for her to hold a drink. This is just one tiny difficulty that she’s dealing with everyday, but it also may be a big problem for lots of people who have the same experience as her. After the interview, we had a better understanding of the need of people who have disabilities. This provided us one possible direction that we can work on.
This Sunday, one of our group member Saloni, reached out to her friend from high school and made an appointment to interview Avi M Samuels. We asked him some similar questions as what we asked Selina, such as future career path, what they do in their spare time, and what the difficulties are in their daily life. He’s really friendly person and he see things comprehensively and meticulously. He provided us lots of valuable perspectives and potential resources that we can reach out to. Overall, we really appreciate his help and thanks him for taking his time doing the interview with us.
We look forward to making more progress in the next week. We’ll probably interview our mentor Ryan next week. Due to his busy schedule, we failed to get the chance meeting with him. Each member in our team will do research on different fields. Hopefully, we can come up with a more specific idea about the product that we’re about to design.
Eric,
I like the initiative your group took! Although you were not able to talk to the director of Beckwith program you guys took it upon yourselves to reach out to students of DRES. That’s also awesome you guys were able to interview two people. Were you able to find a direction for your project? Maybe an underlying opportunity found in both interviews. Good luck with the next steps of your design process! I’m looking forward to seeing where you guys take these opportunities.
Hey Eric!
It’s so cool that you had your first experience using a 3D printer. Aren’t they awesome?! Just wait until we get into learning Fusion 360, there are so many cool things you can model. It might seem a little daunting to learn a 3D modeling software if you’re not familiar with using them at all, but everyone will get the hang of it eventually. It becomes really fun once you know what you’re doing because the possibilities can become endless!