Alumni Division

Where did you leave off, where do you hope to go, and what help do you need along the way? 

Your project proposal will help you organize your thoughts and act as a blueprint to guide you through the Challenge. You will come up with your own project milestones, which you will then report on in future project updates.

Submission type: document

Requirements

• Introduce your team and co-designer (let us know if there have been any modifications to your team)

• Explain the problem you’re trying to solve and the solution you came up with: include clear lists of user needs + corresponding product requirements

• Explain where you are in your project: brief history of prototype iterations + current prototype status. Have you made any progress since the conclusion of the Challenge?

• Co-designer check-in: interview your co-designer again, specifically focusing on a) how your past prototype did or did not meet their needs; b) any modifications/updates they desire; c) any life updates since the last time you met (especially if relevant to how they interact with your prototype)

• Project milestones: outline the key milestones you aim to reach during the Challenge (these could relate to unmet user needs/product requirements, usability improvements, aesthetics, product testing, robustness/productizing, etc.). Create a schedule for when you aim to reach each one, corresponding with the Project Update submission dates and Final Event.

• Testing plan: how do you plan to test your prototype along the way (could include mechanical/robustness testing, SW testing, usability testing, etc.)?

• What do you hope to gain from re-participating in the Challenge (why do you need our help vs. doing it alone)?

• How might you give back to the Challenge community? For example, this could include hosting Peer Review sessions and providing feedback to Supported teams, answering FAQs in Discord, hosting Office Hours to provide project feedback for teams (like critique sessions), giving course staff feedback on a specific section of the course or proposing content to add, etc.

Paint the story of where you left off, what your big vision is, what you expect to accomplish by the Final Event, what your milestones are, and where you are now

Submission type: 7-10min video + BOM upload

Requirements:

• Introduce your co-designer, explain the problem you're solving together (user needs + product requirements), and state your single-sentence product objective

• Tell us about what you previously made: what went well? What didn’t go well? What feedback did you receive from your co-designer? Include final visual representation, photos, video, testing results, and updated list of user needs/product requirements showing which have been met and which have not yet been met (and any modifications to the needs/reqs since you last concluded the Challenge)

• Where you’re going: What’s your big vision, and what do you aim to accomplish by the final event? Include visual representations of each, if they're not the same. Explain your project milestones and why each one is important (what value will it add for your co-designer, or how will it get you closer to your big vision?)

• Project update: what progress have you made towards your initial milestone(s)?

• BOM: what have you purchased/spent so far (BOM from last Challenge) and what do you need going forward (updated BOM)? Justify all purchases.

• Next steps: what milestones do you aim to meet by the next project update?

Submission Guidelines 

• Submit the project update form (link provided in Discord) by giving us a link to a YouTube video of your presentation and a link to your BOM in Google Sheets

• Your link may be public or unlisted (but not private)

• Make sure that your video follows the rules about co-designer information (in the FAQ  on the Design Reviews page). In particular, make sure that your video only contains personally-identifiable information about your co-designer if they have filled out a media release form (for pictures and video) and you have asked for their permission (for all information).

Give us an update on the progress you've made towards your milestones! You should have performed product testing by now, so this update will place an emphasis on feedback you've received from your co-designer and your testing results.

Submission type: 7-10min video

Requirements:

• Re-introduce your co-designer, what you’re working on together, and remind us of your single-sentence product objective

• Milestones update: which milestones have you met and which are still outstanding?

• Show photos + video(s) of current prototype status

• Testing results: what tests have you performed so far (usability, robustness, longevity, etc.), and what were your results?

• What feedback have you received from your co-designer? Will you adjust any product requirements, milestones, etc. to address their feedback and/or the testing results?

• Next steps: what milestones will you have met by the Final Event? Do you expect to continue working on your project after the Final Event?

Submission Guidelines 

• Submit the project update form (link provided in Discord) by giving us a link to a YouTube video of your presentation

• Your link may be public or unlisted (but not private)

• Make sure that your video follows the rules about co-designer information (in the FAQ on the Design Reviews page). In particular, make sure that your video only contains personally-identifiable information about your co-designer if they have filled out a media release form (for pictures and video) and you have asked for their permission (for all information).

This is it, the final event! Show off the nice progress you have made over the past months, and let us know how close you are to achieving your "big vision."

Submission type: 5min video + document (*submission criteria might change)

Part 1: Document

The final prototype is a more refined version of your product that has gone through some iterations of design, test, and re-design. It might just be what your co-designer needed, or you may have a ways to go (so it may only be "final" for the purposes of this class). We'd like to know how you made it, and how others could make it as well! Also, please include pictures and videos whenever possible. Videos in the document should be GIFs, since they will auto-play when the document is viewed.

Who is your co-designer?

In your own words, tell us about your co-designer and what you learned from interviewing. And not just about their impairment - who are they as a person? Include anything that your co-designer would be comfortable sharing. Some of these things you may be able to answer before your interview, and others are things you should try to gather information on. Some suggestions:

• introductions

• living situation

• daily routines

• hobbies

• occupation

• any relation to you or others in the community

• impairments or AT-related needs

• solutions they have already tried

Needs and Requirements

• co-designer needs statements

• product requirements (derived from needs)

Concept Generation and Selection

Give us a narrative of your brainstorming! Tell us about the following:

• How did you clarify the problem?

• What did your external search and brainstorming look like? Any particularly notable ideas that you wanted to keep or ended up discarding?

• How did you select the concept with which you'll move forward?

Please also tell us briefly about your design iterations, how you went from earlier to more sophisticated prototypes, and what design elements you were testing in earlier iterations.

Tell Us About Your Product

• Bill of Materials - What are you using to build your final prototype? Include quantities, order links, and cost breakdown of any purchased materials. 

• Software Tools - For software projects, please include any existing software frameworks, tools, and languages you used.

• "Technical Drawing" - Can be a CAD model, a wireframe, a hand-drawn sketch, a fabric pattern, a wiring diagram, and more! Include multiple views and detailed specifications and/or constraints (sizes, shapes, resistances, weights, etc) when possible. If you're using something like an obj or stl file (anything to be read by specific software), please also include an image of the item(s).

• Build Instructions - How would another maker build this? Include any specific pain points you noticed, or any particularly sensitive parts of the design (things that were strongly affected by slight changes). See these Instructables articles on Nico's Full Body Oven Mitt and the Bom Bidet as examples. For software components, in place of a "how to build," please include a full README file that tells the reader what frameworks and languages you used, how to navigate your code, and how to execute your software. Pointers to your GitHub repositories are preferable for software (make sure they're public).

Test Results

• Test Plan - What was your prototype test plan? What can you test by yourself, with your co-designer, or with others? Are there specific times or places that you need to pay attention to for testing?

• Testing Pictures/Video - If your tester(s) are okay with it, document your tests with pictures and video! Always be sure to ask for permission (and submit a media release form) first, though. If you cannot provide a picture with your co-designer (or it is difficult to do so), please approximate a demonstration of your product to the best of your ability with a member of your team.

• Testing Results - What happened? What did you learn? Detail any quantitative ("The plastic sleeve was 2 cm too long") and qualitative ("My co-designer had to strain her neck to reach the spot where her head was supposed to go") observations, as well as any direct user feedback.

Reflections

We'd like you to think about a few things after going through your final prototype.

• Future Improvements - What did you learn from this iteration? What worked, and what needs to be tweaked or entirely redesigned? What would you do if you had more time and/or resources?

• Scalability - We're doing individual co-design in this course, but can you tell us something about how scalable your design is? How specific is your solution to your co-designer and/or their environment? Are there other people it might help? How do you think you'd go about making 100, 1,000, or 10,000 copies of this? It's perfectly fine if the answer is that your product is completely unscalable and is super-specific to your co-designer. Tell us why, and congratulations on tackling a problem that would likely have otherwise been ignored!

• Design Process Reflection - What would you do differently if you had to go through this process again? This part is focused on the process, rather than anything about your product that you learned along the way.

Part 2: Video

• Go through the guidelines on clear presentation from the course, if you haven't done so already.

• Presentation is 4-5 minutes long (this is a strict time limit)

• Briefly introduce yourselves, including where you're from and what school or organization your team is part of, if relevant.

• Introduce your co-designer (Who are they? What do they like to do? What challenges would they to tackle? Are there any other relevant pieces of information, such as living situation, family, caretaking, profession, etc?)

• Provide a single-sentence product objective

• Briefly step through your iterations in 1-2 slides, focusing on any major changes you may have made between low and high fidelity versions, or changes in product direction.

• Focus your presentation on your final product, giving us a visual representation and a demonstration of how it works. Include your videos of it in use, by your co-designer if possible.

• Briefly describe any future plans you have for your product.

• End by telling us the top 2-3 things your team learned during the CRE[AT]E Challenge.

• You will also be asked to upload a thumbnail (cover image) for your video for when we upload it to YouTube (after the end of the Challenge).

• Finalists should be prepared to take 2-3 minutes of questions live after videos video during the final event. Teams will be notified if they are finalists shortly before the event.

Optional: Two-slide snapshot

• Teams may optionally submit a two-slide "snapshot" of their projects, which will be shown during breaks in the final event. These slides will only be shown for a few seconds at a time, so we recommend photos-focused slides with relatively few words. Please include your team number/name. Possible ideas on what to include: your product "hero shot," product testing photos, team photo, single-sentence product objective.

• Snapshots must be provided as a 16:9 aspect ratio PowerPoint slide.

Submission Instructions

• Final Event submission will be via Google Form, with the video and optional snapshot uploaded onto a separate Dropbox folder. Instructions will be sent to teams.