Wow! I have just spent the first week in this beautiful city of Paris. There are so many things that I tried out as well as many things I have yet to see. Paris really did match some of the thought that I thought of how it would be, and I am so excited to explore more of Paris and enjoy Paris to the fullest! This past week has been a multitude of things: meeting our professor, listening about his experience about this program and the lessons ready for us, and meeting our user and mission to accomplish something that normally would be done in a semester, in two weeks!
Here are three key things that I remember from my experience here in Paris this last week:
- I loved hearing from our professor Dr. Wettergreen about his experience doing this program around the world.
- The talk with Yousra and meeting her for the first time was memorable.
- Spending time under the Eiffel Tower was so beautiful!
One activity that will shape the memories I will take away from this experience is the scavenger hunt going all around the city of Paris. Not only did we have to change our perspectives to understand and look at the city from another angle, but we were sent to places that we would not have gone otherwise.
Some questions that my team still needs to answer in our prototype are the following:
- How might we represent the adjustable cup holder strap?
- How might we mount the cup holder “whipout” mechanism to the wheelchair?
- How might we find out ways to improve our insulation?
Some opportunities that I see from the project if this were to move forward is maybe implementing a damping mechanism for the cup so that it can be stable even with the shock of the wheelchair movements. Also, I could potentially see this becoming something that could be used for many more wheelchair users who share the same frustration with a cup holder.
I honestly thought I contributed the most during the brainstorming stage where I proposed different ideas and gave feedback to my team members’ ideas also. This really gave our team the momentum to push forward until making the decision for our final idea. I enjoyed the 30 minute low-fidelity prototyping the most because at this stage I was simply making representations of my concept of the final idea.
I think I struggled the most when we were looking for improvements for different ideas of our design blocks because it was difficult for us to come up with immediate solutions to things that we saw needed improvements.
The highlight of the week for me was researching about the project and the scavenger hunt. Even though there were less things academically, there still were endless things to learn and explore about the city.
One advice I would give to a student considering visiting Paris next year for iSEED is to really care about your project and step out of your comfort zone. This way you will experience a lot more the things you would not have even imagined sealed by your fears!