Our final design project for the year took everything we learned and applied it to the real world. A client visit from a Kim and Tim; one with multiple sclerosis and the other with diabetic retinopathy, urged us to engineer a design that would help them accomplish day to day tasks and remove barriers they face as people with disabilities.
<aside> š” Focusing on Kim: As a group, we made it our goal to create a device that would help her open doors, which is currently difficult for her due to her wheelchair and limited hand mobility.
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ā Teamwork and cooperation
ā Time management
ā Organization and planning
ā Oral communication
ā CAD in Autodesk Inventor
ā Mechanical skills (using power tools, etc.)
ā 3-D printing
ā Report writing
ā Circuit design
ā Programming in C for Arduinos
As a group and individually, I collaborated with teammates on our journey through ideation, design and presenting our device. Although my experiences lay mostly with the software aspect of the project, I contributed to the physical models of our design as well. Below is a video of our design in action.
https://youtube.com/shorts/wi4wB8sfaZQ?feature=share
<aside> āļø Skills showcased: Programming in C and time management skills. Having a small timeframe for this project encouraged me to dedicate appropriate amounts of time to each part of the project and stay on task with my individual efforts and group ones.
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<aside> š Reflection: Due to me being the only group member with prior experience building circuits and working with Arduinos, I had to take on the bulk of the motorized component of our design. I learned a lot about working alone for this portion of the project, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of it. I believe Iām now capable to finding and using different resources, as well as managing my workload to stay on top of everything and produce meaningful results.
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