Author: ttt9bu
An end and a new begining
Yesterday marked the final of the Advanced Design J-term course (minus all the papers that I am currently crunching through). Despite the very short amount of time that we had, It has been an worthwhile adventure while I look back of all the thing I have learned and accomplished these past 12 days. I got to meet such an inspiring person as the patient for my project. The greatest lesson that I learned through talking and observing my patient is being optimistic and making the most of every situation. I finally got to work on a project related to swimming, which I dearly love. For such a short period of time, we not only identified the need and problem, built a function prototype for our idea, and actually tested the idea as well as tried to swim blinded. We actually are currently thinking to continue working on the project next semester. Even though I have had previous experience with designing project before, this course really reinforce and improve my understanding with the design process. One of the tool that I found every helpful for both of my project is the use of journey map. Last but not least, my sleepless condition does not really improve and actually got worse the pass few days. However, my exercise new year resolution has been really good thanks to the personal health project. May be this will be the year that I actually keep up with it. Four more days till the Spring semester starts and I can’t wait to apply what I learn to my next adventure.
-Vi
Have you ever swim blinded?
One and a half week ago, if someone asks me, “Have you ever swim blinded?” I would have the same reaction and answer like most people, “No and why would I?” Back to the present, I can proudly say, Yes I did. For a physically healthy person, it is very hard to drag the concept that it is actually possible for visually impaired patients to swim. I realized very quickly the moment I put on the black-painted goggle and get down to the lane, this task is going be a challenge.
I actually did pretty decent for the first time period between when I started to when I took my first breath and the rest of the way is an adventure. “ I think I am hitting the wall, what if I had a head-on collision to the person on the next lane, oh no I can’t breathe, where am I now, is it half way to the pool yet, I am feeling so claustrophobic, no I am drowning or am I?” This monologue was going through my head the entire longest 20 seconds I have ever felt swimming. As a designer, sometimes it takes us to be in the customer’s shoes to fully understand the problem. From my traumatic swimming experiment, it is definitely a need for an assisting device to help guiding visually impaired patient to swim straight and within their own designated lane.
-Vi
Sometimes it is better to think like a child
Going through college, work and now graduate school, I notice one character of me that is on the trend to decrease over time: my creativity. As an engineer, we sometimes are tied down to the details technical aspects, about the risk factor and regulation, etc and because of that, we forget to think outside of the box. It is really not until this J-term advance design class that I realize what would be different if I can just let my brain back to my little self and imagine without any constraints.
Similar to how we did with our Patient-health project idea generating practice, today we were given a problem/case study of an Alzheimer’s patient with falling issue. Our task was to design a special chair for this patient and then later used two different medium (paper and clay) to build our prototype.We then presented our ideas to the class and receive questions and feedback. From the outside looking into our classroom, we probably would received very weird look from people. Why would these college kids cutting, gluing paper and then playing with clay in the middle of the class time? Yes, we play, think and even imagine like a child but the end result from this class exercise is a collection of great chair, walking assistant solutions and even more new ideas, knowledge, experience that we learned from one another through the class period.
Remember those crazy, wild dreams that we imagine as kids like a machine that would remove your milk tooth without you seeing the scary dentist ? How awesome would it be if they actually came true? Sometimes, it is better if we can keep thinking like a kid, cause there is no limitation for the goodness we can bring to this world.
-Vi
Day 2: Going blind is not the end
Our Tuesday class activity was wrapped up with us watching the movie Going Blind by Joseph Lovett. The film is an documentary of Lovett himself as he tried to accept and overcome his struggle with vision loss, due to Glaucoma. Throughout the movie, Lovett encountered and befriends with other visualized impaired patients which the hope to learn more about his possible future of going blind in order to have a better preparation for it.
As like many other documentary films, Going Blind is a very informative movie that provides me better understanding about the different eyes conditions and cause of certain visualize impairment problems. Stand out the most for me is the stories of people coping, adapting and moving on after their vision loss. Many people like myself usually assume most of blind people are born with the condition and vision is a binary thing: Either you can see or you cannot. Going blind is definitely not the end especially after seeing the six visualized impaired patients in the movie. While there are many research going on which the hope to revert the vision loss, I realized there is also a big need for assisting technology to help these individuals like my patient adapting to their new condition while still able to get back to their daily life. This realization really helps me with my patient’s observation and project need identification.
-Vi
Inspiration- the first space of Innovation
In the first chapter of Change by Design book, the author Tim Brown mentions the three spaces of innovation: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation. The entire class today is devoted for Inspiration. For the personal health project, exercise/ physical activity is identified as the problem area that I decide to focus in for my partner. Through interviewing with my partner, we decided that the goal of this project is to redesign the exercise schedule as well as way to track the performance to ensure that this routine will become regular as a habit. Since it is also the season for New Year resolutions, I am inspired to not only to redesign this specifically for my partner but also later apply it to my daily life as well.
The highlight of today class in my opinion is the meeting the patients section. My group works with a patients with visual impairment. Through conversations with her, we have learned and identified three problems that she currently struggles with:
- Problem with visibility walking in the dark especially when crossing streets and driveways.
- Problem with managing her dog play time such as picking up the toys.
- Currently the patient’s clothes is labelled using PenFriend Audio Labeler. However, these washable labels are limited in numbers. As the results, she can no longer able to use these labels for any new clothes.
All three of the patients’ story not only give me inspiration for projects to help them with their daily life problem, but also motivates me to better use time and energy.
By Vi
BME Design 