As a final project for Carnegie Mellon University Physical Computing(60-223) course, we work with one assigned Osher student (Emily) from CMU Osher Institute. Through multiple stages of interviews, ideations, discussion, and critiques, the goal of this project is to design a working prototype satisfying the specific needs of the Osher student.

Meeting Agenda

We planned the interview in two parts: things she enjoys but could be better, and things that are challenging for her, and each in situations as an Osher student and daily situations.

Our agenda on Google Doc

Meeting Summary and Major Takeaways

At first, we talked about this project and her past involvement with another group. She said that the group planned to make her a delivery box because she has a problem with people stealing her Amazon packages. She said that she did not have the final product, which is quite unfortunate. We noted that people stealing her package could be a potential problem we can work on.

We also talked about things she likes to do. She said that she enjoys making mandolins. We initially thought that she meant playing mandolins, but then she showed us around her house which has multiple mandolins, and several wooden models which she explained to be in the process of making them. She said that making a mandolin takes several months. We are very very impressed. We asked if there is any problem or if there is some aspect she could use some help, she said that her eyes are not very good so some parts that require precision such as cutting the groove is difficult. We noted this as a potential problem to work on.

Emily’s workstation

A mandolin Emily is working on

Another thing she likes to do is gardening, and she said that because of the pandemic she is planting more vegetables. A difficulty is that she has back pain, especially when bending down and getting up, doing activities such as picking weeds is quite painful for her. We noted making something so she does not have to bend down as another potential problem to work on.

Following the talk about the coronavirus pandemic, she said that she gets groceries delivered to her, and her son who lives with her right now picks them up for her. She said that she is among the high risk people for the virus, so she has to be extra careful. We noted the grocery delivery/pickup problem as a potential problem to work on.

Finally, we asked her if she had anything in mind that she wants us to work on. She said that her house has a mouse problem, and she wanted us to make her a mouse detector (not a mousetrap) for her. She said that the mouse only runs around the corners of her house, and her son has a cat so she doesn’t need the mouse detector to kill the mouse, but just notify her and she could ask her son to bring his cat down. We noted this as a problem we can work on.

Reflection and Discussion

Overall, our interview was fun and effective, and Emily was great to talk to. She was excited to take part in the project, and she kindly answered all the questions that we asked her. We could generally follow our agenda, except that some points we wanted to directly ask came out more naturally from Emilly as we talked. Before we had to ask her about what kind of activities she does, and what the problems are in regards to doing those activities, she showed around the house and introduced various activities that she likes to do. We could continue our interview based on these activities.

Another thing was that we were expecting her to have some issues regarding her life as a student at Osher, especially in regards to the current online class situation, but she was not really taking classes at the moment, and she talked more about her daily life in general. This was fine, although it was different from what we had expected.

If we were to do this interview again next time, we would probably ask her to show specific areas that are relevant to the topics we want to especially investigate. As we are leaning towards the mouse detector idea, we are thinking that we will need a better sense of what the floor plan is like, and how we would install something at her house, but we can figure this out by talking to her again later.

For our final project, our team was tasked with designing an assistive device for an older person. This device is meant to aid our client with their daily life in some form or another. We met with our client Cynthia via Zoom Call in order to ask her questions and gain better insight into her life as well as what daily problems she encounters which may be solved with a built physical device. The primary purpose of the meeting was to help identify various directions our project could go, and get some idea inspiration for what we might build for Cynthia. During the online video call, members present included our client Cynthia as well as the rest of our team: Gracia, Seth, and Amy. The Zoom meeting took place on Wednesday March 25th, 2020.

Meeting Agenda

The general outline for our interview:

• • Self introductions – get to know each other more
  • Explain the project and clarify expectations
  • Ask Cynthia about daily tasks that she might have problems with or any activities in her daily life that are difficult, frustrating, or can be improved
  • Ask Cynthia if she has something she enjoys doing, which has become harder with age. Are there creative ways to make that thing easier to do now?

Meeting Summary

Over the course of the meeting, we were able to learn more about Cynthia like where she likes to eat, her go-to drinks, and stories about her friends. More importantly, we were able to get a better understanding of her needs and the daily activities that we might be able to help her with. One of issues include her dog being particularly keen on chewing her sandals, but nothing else. We also learned a lot about the health book that Cynthia is currently working on.

Although she has finished writing most of it, she is having a hard time completing the project and going through the publishing and marketing process. She shares that one of the biggest hurdles in completing it is having a lack of motivation. She notices that it has been affecting her in the past few years and affects other parts of her daily activities. Additionally, she feels “scatterbrained” sometimes, which makes things like organizing books or clothes more difficult than previously to complete. It has also adversely affected her timeliness and punctuality in her personal life. She finds that she is often late to many things. 

Since we couldn’t get to the root of what motivates Cynthia, it would be difficult to create a device that will make any significant positive impact on her motivation. We instead focused on what was within the scope of our abilities and talked about the possibilities of creating a device that can bring her back into focus and remind her of upcoming events. Another possibility we discussed is having some type of device to train her dog or prevent her dog from chewing on her sandals. 

Cynthia on Zoom call with us, explaining her daily activities and potential problems our device could solve.

Screenshot from our group zoom call with Cynthia.

Reflection

The meeting didn’t quite follow the agenda to a T — there were times where we got off-topic. However, we were still able to obtain the relevant information needed in order for us to get an idea of the sort of device we will ultimately build. There were times where we would derail for a bit, but the pertinent information was still there. It was quite easy to connect with her at a more personal level because she was so open to discussing her own interests and whatnot, so once we got to discussing her daily needs and things she possibly struggles with, we were readily able to come up with a few ideas for attempting to mitigate these struggles.

Even with the occasional rambling, we all thought the meeting went fairly well. That said, there are things we could have done better. For instance, upon presenting an idea (such as the trainer for the dog to stop it chewing Cynthia’s shoes), it may have been helpful to explain how such a device may work or look. This would give Cynthia a better idea of what such a device may look like or work like even before a prototype is made, allowing her to provide input for what she wants in those regards.

We were not able to take an image with Fredrick, but this is a sketch of a potential device that he found interesting

Introduction

For our project, we want to create a device for an elderly person that would pertain to them specifically and help them resolve some problem existing in their life or will bring more positivity for them. Our participant is Fredrick, and we were able to schedule an interview with him to first get an idea of who he is and the problems that he may have in his life. Our team consists of Patricia, Aadya, and Z (team Exercise Companion) and we had a great first conversation with Fredrick on March 24th.

To listen to our full interview: Click here

 Meeting Agenda

To plan for the structure and content of our interview, we created a shared Google document.

Introduction

• Hi, Frederick. How is everyone doing today?
• Thank you Frederick for meeting with us remotely today, it is a challenging time for everyone and we very appreciate your presence today. May I record this interview for documentation purpose?
• I’m …, I’m a (school year) student major in …. I like to ….. in the spare time. But I don’t like …. In the last project of making our own assistive device, I made a …. That help me … .
• Would you like to share a little bit about yourself as well? What do you like to do? What do you don’t like?
• What drew you to want to participate in this project? What would you like to get out from participating this project?

Explanation and clarification about project goals

Let me explain a little more about what we are going to do. Please let me know at any time when you have any question.

• We are:
  • Trying to build prototype useful devices
  • Engaging in an iterative design process, including gathering formative feedback around the midpoint of the process
  • Taking about six weeks to go from this meeting to a reasonably high-fidelity final product
  • Documenting our process
  • Capable of simulating somewhat complex electronics via Tinkercad, and more complex physical objects/devices via CAD software
• We are not:
  • Professional technologists who are experienced in making polished products
  • Planning to build something that will be sold commercially
  • Constrained by any practicality outside of usefulness to the person we’re designing for
  • Likely to invent a totally novel piece of electronics (we combine many existing available components in new ways, but don’t make components)
• Give a quick timeline overview of the process
  • Interview (between Monday March 23rd and Sunday March 29th)
  • Ideation and convergence on an idea for prototyping (ideation sketches due in class Monday March 30th)
  • Developing a prototype (Monday March 30th–Sunday April 5th)
  • Presentation and critique of these prototypes  (Monday April 6th)
  • Elaboration/improvement/changes/finalization of the final project (weeks of April 13th and 20th)
  • Final presentations and critique  (Monday April 27th)

Understanding needs and thinking of possible technological interventions

In short, we would like to make a device that would be useful for your daily life. It can be something that help in daily activities that are difficult and frustrating. But it can also be something that’s a gadget that is fun and enjoyable to you.

• So, first of all, are there things that you already know that you really want to have that will help you a lot?
• Are there any activities in your daily life that are difficult, frustrating, or otherwise seem like you could use an intervention?
• You have mentioned that you enjoy …. a lot. Has it become harder with age? Is there any way to make it easier or more enjoyable?
• Imagine you have a device that can make anything more convenient, what would it be?
• What are some little things that make you happy in your daily life?

Things to remember during the conversation:

• why is this important to you?
• How about ….?
• Would it be better if you can ….?

Conclusion

Thank you for your time and we appreciate you to meet with us in short notice. We will try to communicate with you and make sure you are a part of the process as much as possible. This is our contact information and we look forward to talk to you again!

Meeting Summary

Our meeting with Frederick was very insightful and helped us learn about his daily routine and potential areas of assistance he might benefit from. First, we asked him about the hobbies he might have currently. He mentioned that he was getting into art but after some discussion, we didn’t find any evident reasons to provide assistance for him in this area. Next, spoke about his morning routine in which he reads multiple newspapers and wishes there was a way to consolidate all the news from various sources into one. We realized that the scope of that would be outside of this class.

He also described how he needs to constantly remind his wife to get the clothes from the washer after they are washed since the laundry unit is in the basement of his house and it is hard to know when the laundry cycle is complete. Although there was potential to design a persistent reminder that would remind his wife to get the clothes, as a group we decided that it would be best to design the assistive device for Frederick specifically.

After asking a few more questions about his daily routine we learned that he does yoga and stretching every day. He said that going through the exercise routine every day in the same order gets monotonous and boring. We thought that this could be a potential area where we could intervene and create something for him that would make his exercise routine more enjoyable. He said:

The goal would be to vary order of exercise with prompts for next exercise;

Following this meeting, he emailed us his stretching routine with all the exercises he goes through which was a very useful piece of information for us to begin ideating.

The exercises in his yoga set routine

Thoughts After Our Meeting

After our meeting with Fredrick, we discussed as  group and reflected over the information that we had gotten from the interview. People said that they were happily surprised by how open and talkative Fredrick was. He would think of different problems on his own and try to think of ways that he could help our project, for example, what types of problems would be feasible to actually create a device for.

We had planned out the structure of the interview beforehand and the different questions to ask him and everything went according to plan. We introduced ourselves in the beginning and explained our project carefully to him, he did not have many questions for this part, but stated that what we were doing was very interesting and he was happy to help.

With our list of questions, we were able to get a good idea of where the direction of our device could go. As we were talking with Fredrick we consistently gave our ideas on what we could do and see his reactions to each brainstorm. He was very helpful in the feedback where he had strong opinions on what he wanted and what was doable for us. Also, listening to his responses to our different ideas, we realized that Fredrick is a very practical man and enjoys the things that are simple but effective. He generally liked the devices that did not have multiple different features going on and preferred devices that were beneficial to his life rather than just for fun. This was the reason that we landed on our final decision to create the exercise companion device.

Next time in conducting interviews, we would be sure to call the person first to set an interview time, because that is the most effective way to get connected to a person. Then, email them as a backup plan if the phone call does not go through. This is because Fredrick did not respond to our initial email and during our interview he explained that he rarely checked his emails.

In this class, we have the opportunity to solve a problem experienced by an older person we are paired with by using what we have learned so far. We (Leah, Abel, and  Varsha) were paired with a retired English teacher named Jane. On March 25th at 10:00am we interviewed Jane to get an opportunity to learn more about her and find out how we can help her with any problems she has. We conducted this interview over a group phone call.

Interview Agenda:

We prepared a list of questions for Jane before we started the interview. The below questions are what we had prepared:

Introduction

1. Group member introduction
2. How are you doing?
3. Ask/inform her that we are recording the meeting
4. Would you be willing to move your camera around to show us parts of your house?
5. Remember to conclude and thank the interviewee for her time

Interview Questions

-> Remember to clearly state the goal of this project

1. What does a typical day look like for you?
2. Are there any problems that you run into everyday or is there an immediate thing that comes to your mind when we ask you if you are facing any solvable problems in your daily life?
3. Are there any chores that you do on a daily basis that are just generally irritating or boring to do?
4. What hobbies and interests do you have?
5. Could you please demonstrate any daily task of your choice?

We had designed some of these questions for a video call, but in the end we did not ask the questions that pertained to that format of interview.

Interview Summary and Main Takeaways:

The interview went well given that we were not able to use Zoom for a video call. She entered the interview with some ideas, but unfortunately her ideas either didn’t fit the project requirements or were outside the scope of our skills. Through the interview, we learned a few things about Jane and were able to come up with some ideas that may be useful for her. She has a dog, and her daughter lives nearby. She enjoys gardening, reading, and feeding the birds. Since our interview occurred without video, we have no photo documentation to attach to this post. Below are the ideas we came up with based off of the interview.

• She has a pitbull mix and is afraid of it running away when she leaves it in the yard. Additionally, sometimes her daughter walks the dog and forgets to tell her. This gave us the idea to build a tracking leash that would help Jane keep track of it when her daughter walks the dog and ensure her dog doesn’t run away.
• Jane is very interested in gardening, but she has issues with pests consuming her plants. We thought about building a system that would detect when pests enter her garden and scare them off by flashing a bright light or playing a loud sound. We later determined this to be nonviable because of the difficulty of detecting pests.
• Jane also has a bird feeder, but she has an issue with other animals stealing food from it. She wants to feed the birds, but is worried about the bird seed attracting pests. We thought about building a device that would detect the weight of the animal and only dispense food if it thinks the animal is a bird.

Your thoughts after holding the meeting and discussing as a team:

I think the meeting went well, and we were able to learn a few important things about Jane. We had an issue at the beginning because we had not told Jane how we would communicate with her. We were unable to reach her by email, so we called her. One member of our group lost connection in the middle of the group phone call, which suggests that this is not an ideal platform for future communication. To deal with this problem we talked with Jane and helped her download Zoom. For future meetings, we should be able to use that platform to see parts of her house and better communicate with her.

We are Chloe, Elizabeth, and Ivan, undergraduates at Carnegie Mellon and members of TEAM DIANE. For our final project in our Intro to Physical Computing class, we are tasked with creating a personal assistance device for a OSHER student here at Carnegie Mellon. OSHER is a program at CMU that offers life long learning experience for the older/retiree population. The goal of this project is to solve an everyday problem for an OSHER student using Arduinos. Our group is assigned to a lady named Diane. This post documents our first hour long meeting with her where we discussed the scope of our project, and tried to dig into her everyday routine and pinpoint problems and items that we can solve or streamline by creating a custom made Arduino device. Obviously, due to the COVID-19 process, this was done not in person, but through zoom.

Meeting Agenda/Planning

Introductions! – Explain our timezones!

Scope of Project: 

Show Diane Project 2 samples and Past Project 3’s

Explain Limitations due to COVID-19

More theory and online than hands on

Looking for 3 project ideations!

Ask for thoughts

Questions to ask:

OPEN WITH: Are there any problems off of the top of your head that you think could be within the scope of this project

What does your everyday routine look like?/What does a normal day look like to you?

Do you have any jobs or volunteering locations? What are those places like?

What are your hobbies? – What do you wish you can change about how you approach them?

What did you like to do that now you cannot? (Find a way to segue this so it doesn’t feel like we are offending her age.)

How do you interact with your family?

What social circles do you maintain? How do you maintain these social circles and what do you do in them?

Wrapping Up:

Questions you think we should’ve asked but didn’t?

Any additional questions for us?

Explain timeline of project: Expectation to set up next meeting after ideation

Meeting Summary

From our initial interview, our team was delightfully surprised to learn that Diane subverts the trope of an “elderly person.” Unlike the typical image in our head that elderly people don’t move around as much, Diane is full of stamina – having “more energy than an old person should have,” according to Diane herself. We learned that a large part of her identity comes from being an athlete. She used to run miles everyday, and she can even outperform young people in energy-intensive tasks due to her strong endurance. 

While her high energy and spirits were palpable through the screens, we learned that her most prominent issues rooted from this delightful trait as well. While she loved doing high-impact exercises in the past to release her energy, she can no longer enjoy those activities due to osteoporosis, a condition that makes her bones brittle and weak.

As such, much of our conversation revolved around how to help Diane cope with her excess energy, such that she can find “peace and comfort in being less active.” 

To begin our conversation, we asked Diane of her current measures to meet this desire. Nowadays, her excess energy is typically relieved through low-impact exercises, like pilates and yoga. However, she has difficulty clearing her mind through these alternatives, as she was so accustomed to high-adrenalin exercises for most of her life. As such, we discussed how Diane could better enjoy pilates by having a guide that helps her breathe and focus on her body. Hence came the idea of the pilates breathing helper, which became one of our final ideas for our ideation.

Pilates breathing helper idea, based conversation with Diane of how she wants to better enjoy pilates

On a similar note of helping Diane find peace with her excess energy, she described how she is often very restless, making it difficult to not fidget when working with other people. To cope with this, she always has a theme song in her mind to regulate the sounds of her brain. However, as she can’t always play music when working with other people, we bounced around the idea of having a custom metronome instead, to help her “calm” down in times when she is overly fidgety. Diane was quite fond of the idea, and we found this to be a fruitful tree to bark on for our final ideation.

Diane explaining how she would like the personal metronome to be like on her wrist

Finally, we touched upon other interesting aspects of Diane’s life that weren’t directly related to releasing excess energy. She enjoys weekly FaceTime calls with her grandson in Chicago, during which they read a book together remotely. From this conversation, we discussed the idea of having a pair of synced book-pointers that helps Diane and her grandson land on the same page together. Diane also mentioned that she keeps multiple glasses but often forgets where she puts them, leading to our idea of making a glasses locator around her house. 

Diane showing us her plethora of reading glasses she needs for different things: piano, reading, etc.

In all, Diane and our team discussed a lot of ideas together, rather than just listening to different needs that she has in her life. This was particularly helpful, as it helped us narrow down our final ideas efficiently and effectively.

Post-Meeting Thoughts and Discussion

The meeting went fairly great, it seemed to sidetrack a little bit in the beginning, because she had some difficulty in understanding to which extent it is possible for us to ideate it. For example, she wanted a device that could play music, which already is a widely-spread existing function in most phones. However, after our brief introduction of what is capable and what is not, the conversation was back on track. We did not have much struggle with starting the conversation and coming up with ideas, because Diane was very engaged in the conversation and had many ideas to offer us. Next time, it would be better for interviews if we begin with the introduction to our capability. Then it would make our meeting more concise and more straightforward. We did not have any more questions to ask afterwards, since Diane gave us a very specific explanation on what she is looking for and what her needs are. We had three ideas afterwards which are breathing helper, vibration beat bracelet, and glasses tracker.

Meeting Agenda:

A brief outline of our meeting was as follows:

• Introducing ourselves and letting Lynne introduce herself
• Explaining our project goals and what we are and are not doing 
• Giving a timeline of our project, when and what to expect 
• Giving her some ideas for certain times of the day which Lynne may have some problems to address
• Allowing Lynne to walk through her day with us
• Q&A about some of the things Lynne addressed in her daily activities
• Concluding the interview and reiterating the timeline of our project

Full timeline of the discussion is as follows:

Icebreaker/ Instructions:

Acknowledge the atypical circumstance of conducting this meeting remotely.

Introduce our names and something that reflects our interest, or other bits of relevant data about our life.

For Lynne:

• Could you also introduce yourself and maybe how long you’ve been living in Pittsburgh or what you like about it?
• Why did you decide to participate in this group activity?
• Could you share something that reflects a personal value or interest?

Explanation and clarification about project goals

• We are: 
  • Trying to build prototype useful devices (“a convenience machine/gadget”)
  • Engaging in an iterative design process that includes gathering feedback midway through the process
  • Documenting our process
  • Capable of simulating somewhat complex electronics via Tinkercad, and more complex physical objects/devices via CAD software
  • Examples of previous projects: light that could simulate different types of natural lighting for someone who worked installing window blinds; trivia machine to answer trivia questions while washing dishes for someone who disliked dish washing but loved trivia

• We are not: 
  • Professional technologists who are experienced in making polished products
  • Planning to build something that will be sold commercially
  • Constrained by any practicality outside of usefulness to you
  • Likely to invent a totally novel piece of electronics (we will combine existing available components in new ways, but will not make components)

• A quick timeline overview of the process: 
  • Today: Interview to get an idea of what to make
  • Week 1: Coming up with a device that would help you with something in your daily life; should have three ideas we could discuss
  • Week 2: Develop a prototype that we will be presenting to you + class
  • Working on the final product [deliverable] 
  • Week 5: Final critique from you & other’s

Interview Questions:

• Our big picture question: “Do you have any difficult or frustrating daily life activities that could use an intervention?”
• Just to get some ideas rolling, an average day can probably be broken up into the following sections: 
  • Waking up/Preparing for bed
  • Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner
  • Work/Travel/Post-work
• Could you walk us through your day and highlight the inconveniences that you encounter throughout?
• Is there a repetitive task you wish could be automated by a device?
• Is there a daily/weekly task you do that could use a more effective reminder?
• Is there an activity you do with friends or colleagues which could be improved by a device?
• Can you think of anything which has become harder with age? 
  • Perhaps of a hobby, you picked up or have been doing?
  • Is there a hobby or goal you wish to accomplish but have trouble with?

Conclusion:

• Thank you for your time!
• Reiterate overall project schedule:
  • 1 week later: 3 idea sketches
  • 2 weeks later: initial prototype 
  • 5 weeks later: final critique
• Any final thoughts or questions?
• Feel free to email us if you have any questions or any new ideas!
• We will get back to you on Monday with the three ideas we generated just to keep you updated. 

Screen sharing to show Lynne examples of past projects

Meeting Summary and Discussion:

Over the course of the meeting, we learned that her continued problem has been her joints in the hands due to arthritis and ways to ease the pain from it. She has been working full time in Property Management for commercial real estate which requires her to type often, which became the biggest factor for her arthritis pain in the hands. In addition, during her free time, she often occupies herself on her iPad, typing letters, which requires her to excessively use her hands as well. Her underlying problems also have factored in with her calcium deposits on her fingers, her osteoporosis, and her degenerative disease. While she had such problems, it was very clear that she is very positive and kept herself happy with her dog, Mendy, her two cats, and her friends she calls and hangs out with often.  

Lynne showing us her calcium deposits

Lynne showing us her pet dog, “Mendy”

In our interview, we discussed briefly about her daily tasks every morning during weekdays, which consisted of trying to keep Mendy occupied while she was in the shower or working on her job. This led her to see another potential problem we could solve: how do we keep Mendy occupied while Lynne is busy. Throughout the interview, she mentioned how some tasks created problems for her pains and how she sometimes dealt with them. We focused on her arthritis for most of the interview. She mentioned that her pain gets worse when she constantly uses her hands, mostly for typing, and she often feels that the best way to ease the pain is to use heat, massage, or rest her hands entirely. Her calcium deposits also came into play during the time she was at the peak of her pain. She gave us insight into her process, as quoted:

“I have arthritis, big time arthritis. And my hands, I spent a lot of time on the computer, and my hands tend to bother me…and they hurt.”

“Having not been on the computers 8 hours a day sometimes, they are a little better right now than they tend to be and winter’s a bad time.”

“My toughest part of the day is just doing certain things with the hands when they hurt. Sometimes heat will help and sometimes massage.”

“When I’m doing all the typing and using the keyboard, that’s when the problems pursue.”

“Best thing for me to do is rest my hands and not use them so much.”

We noticed that while recounting her day, Lynne repeatedly massaged her joints.

During the interview, she also mentioned her osteoporosis, which limited her activity and its intensity. Lynne often likes to go on walks with Mendy and her friends, but she said there have been times she cannot due to problems with the weather. This led up to the question of what she does in her free time, as quoted:

“My interest, let’s see, I spent a lot of time on the computer too. I am into iPads. I am on here a lot. And I love to walk. Mendy and I walk a lot.”

She mentioned that she loves using her iPad. While she sometimes reads books, goes on walks, and watches TV. she said recently gotten into using her iPad. On her iPad she mentioned that she uses it for writing letters, playing games, browsing the internet, and online shopping. She also mentioned that the iPad’s diction feature creates more work for her because she has to go back in and fix up the autocorrect, which strains her hands as well. This led us to notice that even during her free time, she often uses her hands for most of these tasks. Noticing the problem, we threw in the idea about perhaps making a device that keeps her occupied while not using her hands, besides television, and she seemed to be very interested in the possible idea.

Afterthoughts and Discussion:

Overall, we were able to follow the meeting agenda fairly well. Lynne was very cooperative and did her best to answer each question we presented her with, while also going on appropriate tangents when helpful. After we had exhausted each question, we moved onto the next and continued to gain new, meaningful information. Although some questions led Lynne to repeat herself, Lynne consistently was able to provide us with new information the second time around. For example, “Could you walk us through your day?” made Lynne revisit the topic of her arthritis, which she mentioned in her answer to “Why did you join this project?.” However, the second time around, Lynne provided us with new insight into the remedies of heat and massage that she has tried.

Sue tried to open up the meeting by asking Lynne how she was doing, given the unprecedented circumstances (put in place by COVID-19), but Lynne stepped in and asked if we could first introduce ourselves to each other. Next time, we will probably follow Lynne’s example and begin our interview with introductions. Making sure our interviewee is doing okay with adjusting to the circumstances can be naturally weaved into our introductions.

A couple of days after our interview, we had quite a few follow-up questions pop-up amongst our team that we wished to have asked Lynne. These included:

• How do you play with Mendy?
• Does Mendy like wearing clothes?
• Does petting Mendy hurt your hands?
• Any video/computer games you like to play?
• Do you have a lot of floor space inside your house (for games of chase or fetch)?
• Do you use your computer or iPad at a desk? On your couch?

Based on the idea that we ended up choosing, we narrowed down our list of follow-up questions and reconnected with Lynne to gain some more insight on developing our prototype.

Overall, we think the interview went pretty well! Lynne is an incredibly lovely and friendly woman and she was extremely cooperative throughout the entire call. We could tell she was trying her best to provide her with useful information so we would be able to come up with a meaningful project idea. She made us feel very comfortable and the cuteness of her dog, Mendy, was an added bonus.

Zoom meeting with Beth

Introduction:

For this project, we will build an assistive device for our Osher student, Beth.  On Friday, March 27th, Meijie, Estevan, and Suzanne (Team Beth) held a call with Beth over Zoom at 6 p.m. to get to know more about her and what we could build that would assist her in her day-to-day life.

Meeting Agenda:

Our group was divided into two, one interviewer and two note takers. They weren’t permanent roles, but would help the flow of ideas and conversation.

We planned to first start off with going around with introductions to break the ice a little bit and then to proceed with the purpose of the meeting. This included a very brief description of the project, such as our goal, time frame and limitations. Then we would open it up to Beth to talk about herself.

After that, we had these questions prepared to get more specific answers about how we might be able to build an assistive device.

• What do you like to do?
• Is there something you remember enjoying doing, which becomes harder as some inconvenience comes up in life?
• Are there any activities in daily life that are difficult, frustrating, or in general could use an intervention? Maybe narrate the action a little
• How is your day going? Narrate your daily activities?

A general rule our group had set was to speak up if something she was saying could be taken further or turned into a potential idea for a device.

We planned to try to end the meeting off with a narrowing of 3 ideas or so.

Finally, we planned to thank Beth and let her know plans for getting her critique.

Meeting summary and major takeaways:

Beth lives in a neighborhood to the north of Pittsburgh and owns 3 acres of land (wow.) She had multiple jobs and has been a very active member social work of Pittsburgh. Beth talked about how she doesn’t really have much troubles in life so we explored several activities to brainstorm ideas, including walking her dog, working with electronics, calling while driving, and taking out the trash. 

A main issue she explained was organization of papers and clutter. Beth talked about how it would be helpful to have a way to categorize things she should throw away and keep. We tried to think of a labeling device and a device to easily put things online to sell, but what we would be making would just be a label-maker.

Beth shows us a pipe under the road in front of her house that spews water onto her property

Notes from the meeting: we talked about a wide variety of activities to brainstorm ideas

She discussed other issues like her dirty glasses, getting rid of emails, and not carrying her phone around. Beth mentioned an annoyance towards taking out the trash and we talked about making a remote controlled trash can that she could drive out to her street.

One idea mentioned was building Beth a strong lift for her to be able to move the tree limbs and piles of wet leaves from her yard.

She also told us that the soil in her yard isn’t good, there are a few areas without moss, and she wants to make her entire yard covered in moss. She explained how moss can be made by mixing buttermilk and moss. This brought up another potential device, something that could spread moss over all 3 acres.

Post-Interview Discussion:

Our first comment from discussing as a team was that “Beth is dope.” She has been a caterer, a social worker, a business owner, and even more! We all agree that she was super nice and that the meeting went well.

The meeting did initially follow our agenda with a question and answer format, but later we just all racked our brains for an activity that is difficult to do because she was really having a hard time thinking about something she has trouble doing. However, if this were to happen again we would give Beth a better space for brainstorming and a little more structure in identifying inconveniences.

Nonetheless, the wide range of things we talked about allowed us to come up with a variety of ideas. We ended up narrowing down what we gathered from the meeting to three potential assistive devices. 

The project Team Yale was tasked with accomplishing was to design an one-of-a-kind assistive device for one of Carnegie Mellon’s OSHER students. The purpose of our meeting with our client, Yale, was to get an understanding of his interests and a problem that he had that we could design a solution for.  The members of Team Yale, Ola, Zoe, and Anishwar, met Yale for the first time during a video call on Saturday, March 28.

Meeting agenda

As we were brainstorming what to talk about during our meeting with Yale, we decided to start with an ice breaker to get a sense of his character, we then hope to transition into the project to give him an overview of what we would be working on this semester. After clarifying any doubts and answering questions he has, we hope to understand his daily routines by asking general questions. With the information we have gathered, we then hope to dig deeper into the specific activities he does to understand whether he has any difficulties completing them. Through these questions, we hope to get a better sense of what we are able to build for him and bounce these ideas off him. To end off the meeting, we plan to go through some logistic questions we have to make sure we establish how we are going to communicate with him and making sure he has the technology needed for smooth communication.

The following documents questions we wanted to ask Yale during the interview:

Ice Breakers/ Introduction

• Name, where you are from, favorite and least favorite thing about CMU/ Pittsburgh

Transition into the project

• Objective of this project (focuses more on solving a need than developing final product)

General Questions

• Can you tell us about a typical day in your life?
• What are some of the things you like doing during your free time?
• What are some of the daily challenges you would like to solve? 

Specific questions        

• What are some challenges/ problems when you are doing ____?

• What are some things that you enjoyed doing when you were younger?
• What do you like/dislike about living in Pittsburgh?

Logistics

• What are his expectations for the course
• What is the best method of contacting him – phone call, text or email?
• Does he have a computer – does it have a camera for zoom?
• Does he know how to use google drive?

Meeting summary and major takeaways

From the ice breaker questions, we were able to learn a lot about Yale as a person. Three interesting facts we got was that:

1. He spent his entire life in Pittsburgh (Greenfield and Squirrel Hill), other than the few years he was in Berkley for his PhD.
2. He studied mathematics in college and went on to becoming a software engineer until 13 years ago
3. He spends a lot of his time biking around Pittsburgh – sometimes on trails and sometimes just to run errands like grocery shopping.

By asking him the ‘General Questions’ we planned out, we were able to gather a few activities that Yale does on a daily basis that might be potentially things we can help him with. We learnt that Yale:

1. Spends a lot of time biking
2. Wants to improve his eating habits by eating at regular timings and reduce his snacking
3. Would check the weather on his phone before heading out on his bike
4. Had to eat his pills daily, some are before a meal and some are after
5. Finds himself procrastinating when doing dishes
6. Seems to be constantly running late
7. Has a lot of time on his hands currently
8. Loves logic and word puzzles

Eating habits are remnants of my life

When describing his eating habits, Yale explains that they are remnants of his life. When he was working as a software engineer, he would be rushing to work in the morning and hence not eating in the morning.

When you have all your time that is free, there is a pressure to fill the time up – Every second i have is my own

Yale describes his life as fun and adventurous when we would always make time to be outdoors. He sees his life as something he has full control and is constantly curious to explore to learn new things. When he is out in nature, he enjoys admiring wildflowers and bird watching.

I love to a good problem that requires some type of thinking!

Given his background in math and software engineering, Yale loves to solve problems. He has a “super passion” for etymology, the study of words and language and is fascinated by the interesting connection between words. During our meeting, he gave us an example as to how the name Pittsburgh came about and quizzed us on whether we knew where the word Pokemon meant. (We passed the quiz)

At this point of the conversation, some of us had a few ideas we had in mind and started bouncing ideas off Yale to get a sense of what he thinks and whether these devices would be useful for him. The following ideas and feedback are:

1. Making biking as a reward if he does not procrastinate
   • One of our teammates noticed that biking seemed to be an escape for Yale from his chores. We thought it would be interesting to convert that into a reward system where he would only be able to bike if he complete the tasks he wants to
   • Feedback: “I started shaking when you said that”. Yale views biking as his routine and less of an escape. He does not think that taking biking away from him would be nice as it would be taking away his independence. However, he does agree that he lacks discipline.
2. Visualizing the weather data in the region in a way that is both accurate and easy to understand
   • Feedback: Yale does think that evaluating weather is sometimes tricky as it is sometimes ambiguous whether the specific location he wants to go to has good weather.
3. A device to help him with his pills consumption
   • Feedback: Though there are many pills to consume, Yale has been very used to the routine and does not need much help in this area.
4. A companion that would nudge Yale to do different activities
   • Feedback: Yale thinks that it would be interesting to have a sense of nudging occasionally in his life.

Thoughts and Discussion

The meeting was successful, better than what we imagined. Yale is a very lively and fun-to-be-with person. We noticed this right from the very first email we sent to him, the energy in his response really showed he is ready to work with us. For example, he even gave us an acronym from our names ” A….tO…..Z”. We found this interesting from someone that we haven’t met yet.

During the meeting, we realized that Yale is an open-minded and flexible person, he answered every of our questions and also provided some suggestions on how we can make the project work. He is really an amazing person. We were able to follow our agenda and there was a smooth transitioning from one question to another. It was not difficult to start the conversation during the meeting because we already have a starting point from the emails exchanged, so it easier to pick up from there.

The question we wished we had asked him was whether he would like a puzzle that is a multiple choice format or a fun-fact related puzzle. Also, none of the members had a different opinion about how the meeting went, we all think it was really a great meeting!