This week’s class was fun and interactive. We learned more practical tools for 3D printing and worked as a team to brainstorm our research project.
The first two hours were solely on the phone holder model with the software named Fusion 360. Although I have watched the beginner videos in the Fusion websites as well as completed the homework assignment which required building a box before class, I was still not familiar with the software enough to say I could create a model myself without guidance. This has been changed with the tutorial lecture presented by Dan Banach. He was knowledgeable and experienced enough to explain the software techniques with easy to understand language as well as sense and follow-up when people felt not sure. By building the model step by step with explanations on all the features, now I can say I am confident in building simple models by myself. After the class, I adjusted the parameters to make sure the phone holder fit my own phone. I chose a photo that I took at Alaska to be the decal in the front (The public link to my model is here). Seeing models created with my hands through the software and being printed by the 3D printer, I felt a sense of achievement to make something come alive. I started to have a passion for exploring more of the software and have the ambition to build more creative things with models in the future.
In the second half of the lecture, we focused on the project. After the third interview on Sunday, our team had a great starting point for the ideation phase. One thing that our team agreed on was the importance of equal accessibility and affordability. We realized that people with disability would like to be able to accomplish many tasks by themselves without assistants’ help. Thus, two of the themes that we found were vision and tools and attachment. We hoped to create something that can help them “see what is behind them” or something that can help them “grab heavy or hard to grab items easier and independently”. I believe those would be interesting areas to explore later because if we could invent something like this, it is possible that it could benefit more people. The last theme we chose was affordability. We agreed that we would like our design to be equal affordable and plan to take cost into consideration in future design. I think we were making great progress for our project and I am looking forward to doing more research to develop our ideas further before we go to prototypes.
I am Huan Wu, a leadership-oriented undergraduate student studying Accountancy, Supply Chain Management and Information Systems/Information Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
I chose to major in those areas because I am a person who likes to learn new knowledge continuously and take on challenges. The challenges bring me excitement, as I enjoy the feeling of using my expertise to tackle hard issues, find insights and initiate change. I believe having an understanding of different fields allows me to have a broader perspective when I look at issues in business. I aim at improving myself and learning skills to initiate change and make real impacts in the world in the future.
My LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/huan-wu-0507/
Hi Huan,
I agree that the tutorial in class was so helpful! Doing one online is a great starting point, but having someone walk you through the steps in person is a really great way to learn a new software. I’m glad that helped you build confidence in using it as a tool. I like your teams areas of opportunity and I will be interested to see which option you guys choose after continuing to explore and brainstorm about it.