Hickories Interview Documentation
Introduction
Group Members: Gemma, Ella and Aidan
Client: Maggie
This is the Hickories' interview recap! Our team, including Ella, Gemma, and Aidan are working with Maggie to create a specialized assistive device to help with her needs. Recently, we have done two insightful interviews together to ideate different avenues of this project. The first session was held on October 31st at CLASS with Ella, Gemma, and Maggie, alongside Bill (a CLASS employee who coordinated the event). After brainstorming and receiving feedback from these ideas - we as a team along with Zach decided to organize a second meeting to hone in on one idea. This second interview was held on November virtually between Gemma, Aidan, Mal (another CLASS employee who specializes in assistive tech), and Bill. Unfortunately, Maggie was unable to attend this meeting due to timing conflicts. During the meeting, we were able to delve deeper into one idea and gained various insights and recommendations on the project’s direction. These discussions were pivotal in understanding the our client's perspectives and shaping a project that is both meaningful and beneficial to Maggie.
Meeting Agenda
Planned Meeting Day: October 31st @ 12:15 PM
OPENING:
1. Introductions - names and then a quick ice breaker (something about halloween?)
2. Discussing our backgrounds and talking to Maggie about hers
3. Discussing the project and what we plan to do/what our limitations are in terms of fabrication and technology
DISCUSSION:
*We generally expect this to change based off of where our conversation ends up - the most organic section *
Some general jumping off points:
1. Talk about interests, things that she really enjoys.
2. Ask about operating at CLASS vs. at home
3. Talk about digital art!
4. Ask about activities that are challenging/have specific things that are challenging
5. “Why is this important to you?” “How does this activity fit into your day to day life?”
CLOSING:
1. Final thoughts.
2. Ask if Maggie has any questions for us.
3. Contact info?
4. Thank for doing the meeting with us!
Meeting Summary and Major Takeaways
First Client Meeting
Our initial client meeting with Maggie was on October 31st in person at CLASS. It was mostly conducted in the CLASS computer lab and Bill (a CLASS employee) filtered in and out. Ella took handwritten notes of our conversation as an artifact that we could refer back to which has been really useful as the conversation ended up being about 50 minutes long.
Through talking with Maggie, we learned a lot about her story and her journey with CLASS - as well as how she conducts her day to day life at CLASS and at home. We talked to her about her interests and learned that she really loves drawing and art, as well as being really connected via internet/internet savvy, and she loves sports.
An example of notes taken by Ella during our initial interview.
We explored a number of different avenues to see if one idea would particularly stand out to anyone in the room but we struggled to find one that really stuck. Bill pointed us and Maggie in a couple directions he thought might lead somewhere and we had some organic moments which led to a deeper conversation but in this meeting we struggled to fully get a concept that we thought would be truly useful for Maggie (which led us to set up the second meeting).
Follow-Up Meeting
This second meeting was shorter than the first and generally focused around assistive tech in general, and discussing the ideas we had formed already and how we could tweak and alter them to create a more effective and useful device for Maggie. Gemma took notes throughout the meeting in order to have a referable digital artifact. We showed our ideation to Bill and Mal and had conversations about how we could alter the different inputs/outputs and fabrication based off of potential feedback during the in-person prototype critique. Through this meeting and dialogue between group members and Bill and Mal, we ended up settling on the AAC-type box (AAC: Augmentative and alternative communication), where we would create a number of potential button and display configurations to show Maggie the next meeting we had with her.
Post-meeting Thoughts
While the meeting itself generally followed our agenda/initial structure, we did struggle to actually find an idea that we genuinely thought would be useful for Maggie while also being in our technological wheelhouse. We did manage to come out of our meeting with some ideas, one of which we will be exploring but there is always that small worry in the back of our heads of whether or not it will genuinely be useful for Maggie in the end. Ella and Gemma agree that our first meeting was challenging, but we did get quite a lot of value out of it, and were able to create ideas from it. The second meeting was really essential for us to wrap our heads completely around the idea, and having Bill and Mal's knowledge around assistive technology to ask questions about was incredibly helpful. We're planning on trying to bring a number of physical prototypes to the critique in order to get the most use out of our short time as possible.