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We are students in a physical computing course at Carnegie Mellon University. Our final project for this course is to develop an assistive device for a client with a disability. The first step of this project was to have a meeting with our client to better understand their day-to-day needs and certain tasks they might struggle with, to discover a problem space for our device to address. This meeting took place at CLASS with the physical computing student team Peanuts (Jennie, Kyla, and Cody) and Richard, our client, during the first week of our project. We first got to know Richard and his interests, then talked through activities in his life he may have trouble with, and learned more about these activities.
1st CLASS MEETING AGENDA
Our introduction:
“Hi we are..
Jennie: I’m a sophomore from Michigan studying design. Pittsburgh is a bit warmer than Michigan, which has been nice! I have a dog at home and I like doing any sort of hands-on or art activity like drawing, sewing, or crafts!
Kyla: I’m also a sophomore majoring in design. I’m from New York and a fun fact about me is that I have 3 dogs at home! I’ve been enjoying living in Pittsburgh and especially trying all the food spots in Squirrel Hill and Shadyside.
Cody: I’m a Junior from Portland, Oregon, studying mechanical and biomedical engineering. In my free time, I like to play soccer and watch various sports.
Get to know the client:
We’re really excited to meet and work with you! Could you tell us a bit about yourself? What’s something you get excited about? (some sort of question to discover what they like)
What are some hobbies or activities you enjoy doing daily? Can you tell us about some of your interests?
What drew you to participate in our project?
Explanation and clarification about our project goals:
Through this project, we hope to create a device that can make a certain part of your life easier or address problems that you face regularly. Our goal is to create a “convenience device” for you. It can be something mundane, as long as it improves your life even in a little way, we’ll consider it a success!
In around a 7-week timeframe starting this week, we’re going to use an iterative design process to create prototypes and a final product that hopefully can make your life easier! We’ll start with developing prototypes to gather feedback from you at around the midpoint of this project when you come to our lab. Using your input from today’s meeting and your feedback later on in the process, we will try our best to develop our final product in a way that suits your needs and preferences! We will also be documenting our project process through pictures, sketches, and anything made or written during our meetings.
Since we are students, we are constrained by time and the fact that we are not professionals in this field so we can’t feasibly make a final product that is highly complex or sold commercially or invent an entirely new piece of technology, but we do hope to make something that can help you!
Do you have any questions about this process? Feel free to ask questions whenever anything isn’t clear!
Understanding needs and thinking of possible technological interventions:
Walk us through a day in your life. (follow up as needed as they talk through their day: Is there anything about this that is frustrating?) Is there any regular process or event that is challenging or even just annoying in some way?
Are there any ways you think your life could be made more convenient? Or anything you find yourself wishing you had to help you throughout the day?
Could you demonstrate [an action that is challenging or frustrating]? (follow up as needed/guiding questions)
Think of something you used to enjoy doing that has become more difficult. What parts of it has become difficult? What could change to make it easier?
If you like drawing, can you sketch out some of the things you do everyday? Give us a picture of what it looks like to live a day as you!
Conclusion:
Before we wrap up, is there anything else we should know about you or that you’d like to add to our conversation?
Thanks so much for meeting with us! We’d like to give you our emails(?): kylaa@andrew.cmu.edu, jenniew@andrew.cmu.edu, codyh@andrew.cmu.edu, Feel free to contact us if you have any questions or anything you’d like to let us know!
It was great meeting you! To recap, we’ll be reviewing all the material from our meeting today and coming up with prototype ideas for your “convenience device.” Once we get some feedback, we’ll move on to the final product within the next few weeks. We look forward to working with you!
photo from our followup interview where Richard also came down to our lab! Since he was already here, we showed him a few button/switch options to get a sense of what he is most comfortable with.
After the meeting Richard kindly sent us pictures of his bathroom where the device would and pictures of the glasses wipes he uses so we could tailor the device to his life
Meeting Summary and Main Takeaways
Talking with Richard we came to know some of his interests such as reading, computer stuff, exercising, and non-profit work. We also got to know some of his professional history doing internships, jobs and also volunteering at organizations like Pittsburgh urban leadership foundation or Friendship Circle of Pittsburgh. As far as his disability, Richard struggles with some mobility issues on his left side but it doesn’t stop him from living independently for the most part even though his sisters (they’re all triplets!) live in Pittsburgh as well. In the past Richard said he used voice recognition software to help him type, but since entering grad school he’s phased this technology out of use. He told us some things he struggles with are keeping his glasses clean enough so that he doesn’t receive comments from his family about it. His other issue was going through drive throughs. He deals with not only anxiety doing this but also difficulty reaching out to the left to grab his order. Overall, Richard is pretty accomplished, and seems excited and open to working with us as this project progresses.
From our initial meeting with Richard, we found that overall, he has been very successful in adapting to the mobility issues that he has on his left side. Through the meeting, he identified two problems that he occasionally faces in his life. Firstly, he experiences some issues when going through drive-thrus as mobility issues on his left side make grabbing the items difficult. This makes going through drive-thrus difficult and also stressful as he worries he may drop the items. Early ideation on this topic lead us to investigate the possibility of improving his drive-thru experience by creating a device that helps grab items or measure distance when using drive-thrus. In addition, another problem he identified is that his glasses will sometimes get dirty and he won’t notice. While he doesn’t have issues with cleaning the glasses himself, he sometimes has issues with identifying when they need to be cleaned, and only realizes once family members point it out to him. This prompted a couple project ideas that help with cleaning glasses. For instance, a reminder system that would help remind Richard to clean glasses or even a device that performs the cleaning on its own. In general, Richard enjoys keeping himself busy; he is seeking work and has done a lot of internships and volunteer work in the past. We hope to further investigate and see if there is any room for a device that may help Richard manage his busy schedule.
Next Steps
Overall, the meeting followed the agenda and exceeded our expectations in the sense that we didn’t have to end up asking a lot of questions we had planned because Richard was very open with us and freely volunteered information about his life experiences. However, it seemed Richard had talked about this project with his family and they helped him come up with some ideas that he presented to us, but we quickly realized they wouldn’t be feasible within the scope of this project. We tried to inquire as to more specific tasks he might struggle with several times, but Richard seemed pretty satisfied with his capability to complete daily tasks so after an hour we found ourselves at what seemed like a dead end. At this point, we’re considering interviewing him again to try to do some further needfinding.
What We Would Do Differently
While our meeting went well, there were some things that we would do slightly differently in future interviews. It was great to learn about Richard's life and looking back on the interview, it seemed like he did somewhat take control with what ideas were talked about since he was very prepared with two specific ideas. For future reference, we would probably be more clear about certain ideas not being as feasible or suitable for the project prompt on the spot so we could redirect our conversation more productively. Additionally, it seemed like Richard felt like he had to come up with the actual device himself instead of just telling us about his problems, so next time, we would make it more clear that developing a device is up to us and all he needs to do is tell us about challenges in his life.
We did end up scheduling a second interview with Richard so using these reflections helped us reach a very solid and feasible idea after our second interview.
Questions Drafted for Future Interview:
What does your bathroom look like? Is there extra countertop space for a device? Is there a free outlet that it can plug into?
Where do you typically keep your glasses when you sleep?
How do you clean your glasses? What kind of wipes do you use?
What do you like to do outside of work/volunteering? What do you wish you had more time to do?
We know you like going to the gym, but what specifically do you like to work out at the gym?
Do you cook? Are there any things you dislike about cooking?
Would you prefer using buttons or switches? Lights or screen displays? Sound or no sound?
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