This week started with presentations from 4 speakers. One from Illini Service Dogs, one from John Hornick, another from Jeff Ginger, and last from our TA Mehmet Aydin.
Illini Service Dogs spoke about challenge areas and resources available to continue exploring this challenges. Since for privacy issues it is hard to get a chance to observe actual training, it was useful to hear of different ways research can still be gathered. This can be transferred to all of our projects even if we aren’t working with ISD, as a good reminder that we don’t have to be confined to our mentors for research and also think out of the box to interview people who might have different insights and provide a different perspective. I have a friend who works at Beckwith Residential Services, so my team is planning to reach out to him for an interview.
John Hornick walked us through the scope of 3D printing and reminded us how big of a field it is. It was inspiring to hear all the different projects that have used 3D printing because it is easy to forget how powerful this tool really is.
Jeff Ginger talked about his experience making as well as the Fab Lab. I have visited the Fab Lab several times because because I was first introduced to it through a class freshman year. Since then I’ve gone back to make laptop stickers as the VP Community Service of my business fraternity, and to make a shirt through a developmental workshop with Design for America. One thing he brought up that really stood out to me was the idea of DIWO. Do it with others is an important way to look at design because these kinds of spaces makes it easy to work with others who have different backgrounds and learn from each other.
Finally our TA Mehmet spoke about design from a broader view, talking about the total experience. He discussed the MRI scanners used in hospitals, and how kids were afraid of going in them. He shared that after making them themed in a fun way like a pirate theme, kids were more willing to go inside. This was a great example to hear especially because they didn’t reinvent a product, yet they still changed an experience. This is related to what we’re trying to do in adding a little more joy into our experts lives, and this example is a good learning lesson to how that can be done without changing the core of the product.
He shared that after making them themed in a fun way like a pirate theme, kids were more willing to go inside. This was a great example to hear especially because they didn’t reinvent a product, yet they still changed an experience. This is related to what we’re trying to do in adding a little more joy into our experts lives, and this example is a good learning lesson to how that can be done without changing the core of the product.
We ended the day with an exercise to organize our insights and find an opportunity area from them. My team did 2 interviews last week, so we were synthesizing the insights we got from both of our interviewees.
We came up with multiple categories ranging from school/work life to personal life. After discussing our insights with one of my team members Huan, I discovered an area of interest that I am curious to explore more which is independence. A lot of tasks our users can already do but it requires another person as well. We originally were looking to explore multitasking but I think another element of that is being able to do things by yourself.
Hi Saloni! I really resonated with Mehmet’s story about reinventing the MRI machine. I agree with you that it is very helpful to see that sometimes you don’t need to completely reinvent something in order to add value and that sometimes a simple and creative solution can have the most impact in the end.
You are totally right that independence is something that should be considered in product design. I think that is a really powerful aspect of accessibility that I had not remembered before, but listening to ISD’s talk really brought home the degree to which a lot of accessibility products still require an extra person to help out, which, considering affordability as well, is not the best as people would still need to pay a helper and/or work around family’s/friends’s schedules to have someone there to help them.
Hi Saloni, I like the thoughts you shared about the presentations. This is the second time that the Illini Service Dog talked to us. Before the talk, I thought the tool used by service dogs were perfect because it seemed professional and well-designed. It was not until the sharing of opportunity areas that made me realize more room for improvement. As a team member of you, I genuinely think the possible focus of independence was a great point. Previously, I was more focus on equal accessibility and affordability, but those concepts were a little bit too broad. The idea of independence helps our team to narrow our goal.