This was my first time walking into the DRES facility. When I walked into this building, I knew that my journey of discovery of opportunities started.
Tour
The beginning of this journey started with a tour of the DRES building. We went underground to the athletes’ practice room, which was also a museum of a collection of generations of racing wheelchairs. We also visited Adam’s “MakerLab” and learned about Arielle’s story of her 3D-printed gloves for athletes.
First Generation of Gloves 
Newest Generation 3D-Printed Gloves
From the first generation that could easily cause hand injuries to the high-cost second generation of gloves to the new, cheap 3D-printed gloves. This transition of products being used by wheelchair tracking athletes reminds me about a book I previously read, Are Your Lights On. In this book, there was a chapter called “Missing the misfit”. The chapter illustrates the importance to find the misfit, which is a solution that produces a mismatch with human beings who have to live with the solution, and come up with a solution to deal with the misfit. However, misfits are usually hard to recognize because humans are very adaptable creatures that we can live with the misfit until we realize that we didn’t have to live that way.
Before the second generation of gloves, wheelchair tracking athletes had no problems with living with the first generation of gloves that would cause hand injuries. Before the 3D-printed gloves, wheelchair tracking athletes used the expensive second generation of gloves with no problems too. But when 3D-printed gloves came to live, people recognized that they didn’t need to race and practice with the previous generations of gloves. Arielle’s successful story helped me realize the importance of looking carefully from life experiences to find opportunities that could improve our life experiences. This can lead to a long-lasting positive impact on our society.
Expert Users Interview
The roundtable interview started with Professor Sachdev’s overview of the goals of this digital making seminar course. Digital fabrication. Quick prototyping. Human-centered design. Learning how to be empathetic. Finding opportunities within different people’s life experiences to help improve the quality of life in society. These are all big goals that I had never thought about for digital making. But on this day, I learned at least a few from the experts’ stories.
Without listening to the experts’ stories, I could never imagine the life of a person with a disability of mobility. I would never know that a person with a disability of mobility can still go back to the life they used to have. I always felt pity to people who need to move with their wheelchairs or prosthetic legs because I thought that their life would become very inconvenient and lost a lot of fun. However, after hearing Ron and Jenna’s stories, I realized the danger of making assumptions about the life that I had no prior experience.
Ron had fun with wheelchair even after he was able to walk after two years of learning. Jenna was happy with her prosthetic leg that allows her to play volleyball, basketball, and track like everyone else. Arielle started with her idea of 3D printed gloves to her business to working with a charity to make wheelchairs affordable and accessible to people in need in Africa.
After taking away my bias, I realized that there are many people in the world who need us to design products that can solve the misfits that they are currently facing but not realizing. 65 millions of people in the world still do not have access to wheelchairs that they need. There are many things we can design for them to solve their challenges. How could we utilize what’s available to make wheelchairs or other products affordable and accessible to people in need? This question is extremely important for us to consider. When I was thinking about product opportunities, I started to imagine if we could 3D print the wheelchairs locally in their components and assemble the components like how people 3D printed houses. Even though the wheelchairs could be huge, their components are relatively small. As a result, people in poor areas could also 3D print the components and assemble them to serve their needs. This product design idea might not be perfect, but the inspiration I gained from the experts’ stories was material.
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.
Hey! I think it is interesting how you were able to relate this experience to a book you read. It is a unique approach to think about design, and how an opportunity may be hidden behind something that seems to work, but a new way can add more value, be more affordable, or add more joy.
I like your idea to 3D print wheelchair parts locally for communities to have better access to working wheelchairs. This made me think of Arielle’s idea to create plants in developing countries to 3D print wheelchair parts to fix broken wheelchairs. It would make transportation less costly and also reduce the cost of wheelchair parts.