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 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.
Hi Saloni,
I have also been experiencing lags with Fusion 360, though it seems that your case is a lot more severe than mine. My case is bearable. Maybe it’s because the software is a cloud-based program? I’m not exactly sure but it is frustrating. I hope it will get better for you though!
I think the three “How Might We” statements that you and your team came up with are great. I do agree that the third one should be under the other statements though. Another way to think of it is that providing an affordable assistive tool is your team’s overarching goal/statement and the others are more specific statements under it. Have you had a chance to discuss the first two statements with a wheelchair user yet? Although both of them are about providing an assistive tool, by discussing with intended users, I think your team will be able to narrow it down to one of the two. That is what happened with my team. We had a very broad statement but through a single meeting with an expert user, we were able to narrow the scope down to one specific situation. Good luck to you and your team, I think the path you are heading down to will lead to great results!