Inventing for Good
2019
OVERVIEW
Inventing for Good aims to inform students about how inventions can serve and improve the lives of others - specifically people who are blind. This project establishes a realistic goal of designing a product for someone that faces challenges that children may not be familiar with. Building this project will inspire children to continuously think about how their work can directly impact all kinds of people.
MY ROLE
Lead Designer
THE TEAM
1 Designer, 1 Hardware Engineer
TIMELINE
May 2019
The Brief
As humans, we take a lot for granted... it’s easy to forget that not everyone has what you have in terms of health, accessibility, and physical capability.
The focus of this project is to generate awareness and inspire thoughtfulness in our students. Throughout the project students will:
• Engage in building exercises and games that generate empathy and partially simulate what it might be like to live with vision impairment
• Explore and build using vision sensors and various outputs like motors and buzzers to help navigate with limited vision
•Design a wearable product or tool for the blind or visually impaired that students will test and iterate on throughout the week.
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Brainstorming & prototyping
The first Inventing for Good prototype concept was a robotic walking stick equipped with a vision sensor that alerts users when an obstacle is in front of them.
The prototype was successful when tested with kids, but we thought it would be important to give students a chance to have autonomy over what the alert takes form as. We decided to give students various motors and buzzers so they could pick and choose what output would alert their users.
We also empowered students to build a wearable version of the walking stick - something they could wrap around their hands/arms/legs to make the experience more interactive.
Circuitry & hardware exploration
The Inventing for Good prototype used a variety of outputs to make the project as open-ended as possible.
The breakdown of the hardware consists of the following
• Arduino UNO Board
• Vision Sensor (identifies obstacles)
• Servo Motor (for moving objects)
• DC Motor (for vibration)
• Buzzer (for noise)
The final project
The final Inventing for Good project was developed as a hands-on project to be instructed in a week long summer camp setting. Kids ages 3-12 were all confident creators of this project!
