Yarrows Interview Documentation

Introduction

Our team, the Yarrows (Carmyn, Allen, and Nnenna), conducted an interview last Wednesday with a man named Steve who lived with a brain injury. During the course of the interview, we discussed Steve’s interests, such as his favorite food (pepperoni and mushroom pizza) and favorite pastime activities (watching baseball and football) to learn more about his personality. Additionally, we discussed various daily tasks that pose a challenge to him, such as operating a computer, mouse, and keyboard due to difficulty seeing the mouse cursor and only having one functional arm. Furthermore, he has trouble communicating as it takes him time to complete sentences, despite knowing exactly what he wanted to say. Therefore, we discussed possible devices we could build to help mitigate or eliminate such challenges to help improve Steve’s experience living with a disability.

Agenda

1. Introduce ourselves and give some details about our class and our project goals. 

   • We are Carmyn, a Physics and Music Performance student, Allen, an Electronic Music student, and Nnenna, a Mechanical Engineering student. 

   • We are three students in a class called Intro to Physical Computing, which is a project based course focused on the integration of basic technical skills such as programming, electronics, and hardware. All of the projects are meant to be simple interactive devices that enhance the user’s life in some way. 

   • We are meeting today to discuss the possibilities of a device we can create together to make at least one aspect of Steve’s life better.

2. Conduct a brief interview with a combination of predetermined and in the moment questions about Steve and his life. (Answers are in the summary below)

   • Our predetermined questions included:

     1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

     2. What are some things you like to do for fun?

     3. What does an average day look like for you?

     4. Is there anything in your day to day life that you particularly struggle with?

   • Some other questions we asked in the moment include:

     1. What are your favorite sports?

     2. What are your favorite sports teams?

     3. What kinds of foods do you like to eat? 

     4. What kinds of games do you like to play?

     5. How do you play these games?

3. Discuss some initial ideas we came up with for potential devices.

   • First idea is to make a communication device of some sort to help when Steve is struggling to get the words out that he has in his mind. 

4. Conclude the meeting with thank yous and exchanging contact information. 

Summary 

Steve is a 57 year old man who has lived in Pittsburgh his whole life. He used to play football (running back and quarterback) and baseball when he was in high school, and now he loves to watch the professional and college level games on TV. His favorite teams are the Steelers and Pitt for football, for which he says “Pitt’s the shit”. He also enjoys watching the Pirates for baseball, and the Penguins for hockey. When Steve played football, he held the record for the leading rusher in Churchill history, then went on to play for a bit at West Virginia. In addition to sports, Steve also enjoys playing games, both sports related and other (like Black Jack), and his favorite food is pizza with mushrooms and pepperoni (but he enjoys all kinds of Italian foods). 

Since having his traumatic brain injury, Steve is now limited to being in a wheelchair and only has control of the right side of his body. He also struggles with speaking in the sense that it seems like he knows what he wants to say, but when he goes to say it, he stutters a lot and sometimes can’t, or takes a while, to finish sentences. Steve struggles to write as well, since he used to be left handed, but now cannot use his left hand, and does not have great motor function of his right. He also has trouble seeing small details, like the cursor on the computer screen. 

Overall, we had a great time talking to Steve. He is a very funny and hopeful guy who still has a lot of life in him. He is very grateful to be working with us and we are excited to help him out and to have met him. 

Discussion

For the most part, we did manage to get to the items on our agenda we wanted to cover. We got a look at what Steve does in his free time and what an average day in his life looks like. Since his disability was so obvious, and given that he used to be fully able-bodied when he was younger, we wondered what changes he had to make in his lifestyle both big and small to acclimate to his new state of living. 

Our initial ideas for assistive devices for Steve include primarily different versions of a communication device. This seems to be a consistent hardship for him and something that we could do in the scope of our class. An alternative option would be to make a sort of football related game for Steve, since it seems he really enjoys football and just having fun in general. This could also be something that helps grow motor function and/or cognitive skills if done the right way in a game setting.