For the final project of the Intro to Physical Computing class, our Team Alycai, is working with Keith, a brain injured patient from Pittsburgh, and developing an assistive device that will be useful and relevant to his experience. To better understand his wants and needs, and to get to know Keith better, we conducted an informational interview with him. The interview was conducted at Community Living and Support Services (CLASS), a non-profit organization where Keith attends classes for part of the day, and members of our group: Cable, Bhairabi, and Ethan chose to interview Keith at a time after his classes were over. The purpose of our interview was to gain a better understanding of various aspects of Keith’s daily life, the things he enjoys doing, and the limitations he has in these areas.

Meeting Keith:

Introduction/icebreaker

• Name, interest, major, fun fact
• Ask client to share the same
• Ask the client why they volunteered for this project. 
  • What drew them to participate?

• Explanation and clarification about project goals
  • We are:
    • Trying to build a little gadget that makes something in *your* life easier or more fun.
    • Going to see him again on April 5th weeks to get his thoughts on what we’re making, and we’ll have a product for him by May. 
    • Taking about seven weeks to go from this meeting to a reasonably high-fidelity final product
    • Documenting our process
  • We are not:
    • Professional engineers who are experienced in making polished devices
    • Planning to build something that will be sold in stores
    • Building something for a lot of people, so the final is specifically geared for you
    • Inventing new parts; we have limits to both components and skill set
  • Today, we will just be asking you about your life and some of the tasks you do to get a better idea of what we will be making in the future. There’s no right or wrong answers, and there’s no pressure to answer anything you are uncomfortable with. Let us know if you have any questions throughout the process or need anything that would make this conversation easier.
  • By the end of this interview, we want to be on the same page with you about the general idea of what we make. We will be sketching ideas along the way, and don’t hold back if you have any ideas or are excited about/dislike any ideas that we have.
  • Are you ready? Have any questions?
  • If you want to get in touch with us for any reason talk to Bill, he has our contact info
• Questions:
  • What are some things that you enjoy doing?
    • Are there any challenges that prevent you from doing that?
    • Have they gotten harder over time?
    • What do you like about them?
  • What does your daily routine look like?
    • Are there any tasks that are difficult to do in your everyday routine?
    • What makes them difficult?
  • What is something you wish you could do differently in your everyday life?
  • What are some things you wish you could do more?
    • Ask if they’d be willing to demonstrate a daily task or a series of tasks to you during the meeting. They can actually do the task if it’s something simple like getting a glass of water, or they may pantomime the task. The closer to reality this action is, the more likely you are to find a particular aspect of the task that’s harder than it needs to be.
    • Use the simple creative act of drawing to bring out ideas: ask the client to draw a map or cartoon of their daily life and show it to you on camera, or have them narrate the action and do the drawing yourself in a way that’s visible to the group. It could be a map (literal map, showing travels), a sequence of cartoon panels (first I do this, then I do this), or take a more abstract form.
    • In general, using a shared drawing-surface tool (such as a whiteboard in Zoom, or a piece of paper in real life) so that everybody can simultaneously contribute to and see others’ ideas is a great idea.
  • For the final prototype, we also want it to be something that you like to have around. What are your favorite colors?
    • What are some things that you like? Cars? Brands? Movies? Something that you own?
• Conclude
  • Thank your client for their time, make sure they have your contact information, and take any final documentation images/drawings/notes you may need to wrap up before you sign off.
  • One last thing, want to come up with a team name? 
    • Ideas: Keith and the rest, Keith and Co
  • Reiterate the overall project schedule if you feel it would be necessary to clarify before leaving.

Summary and Major Takeway:

• A lot of Keith’s problems already have solutions that rely upon other people or existing devices
• Keith believes that he doesn’t exactly need solutions for these problems as he has already found solutions
• The biggest problems that Keith struggle with are unable to be addressed through physical computing; ie major headaches and a desire to buy weed
• We may need to discuss Keith’s struggles with someone who knows and understands Keith, rather than Keith himself, to understand what it’s like to need to help Keith with his everyday life (and how to create a device that can alleviate some of that work)

After Meeting Thoughts:

Our meeting followed our agenda but wasn’t very fruitful. Keith’s main problem is his headaches, which are an extremely difficult problem to solve. Additionally, a lot of our questions were potentially too probing or too vague, since his response to a vast majority of them were “I don’t know” or “I don’t care”. His main proposed solutions involved growing marijuana to help with his headaches, which is obviously a solution we cannot help with. Our probing questions into his daily activities were not very revealing as to what types of devices might help him, so we wound up relying primarily on Bill’s suggestions of a device to help Keith put his watch on and to help Keith remember his schedule. In hindsight, it would have been nice to have Bill in the room while we were meeting with Keith, as Keith’s traumatic brain injury seems to sometimes make him an unreliable narrator of his own experience. 

For our Intro to Physical Computing class’s final project, our group, the Guavas, is working with Shaude, an individual from Pittsburgh with cerebral palsy, to develop an assistive device that’s useful and relevant to her experience. To better understand her wants and needs, and get to know Shaude better, we conducted an informational interview with her. It was conducted at Community Living And Support Services (CLASS), a nonprofit organization Shaude spends her time taking classes at during the day, with the members of our group: Sapna, Evie, Dunn and Andres. Our goal for the meeting was to gain a better understanding of aspects of Shaude’s daily routine, tasks or activities she enjoys doing, and spaces for an assistive device during these.

Meeting Agenda

10:00 – Introductions/Ice Breakers. Continue the meeting that started in class the previous week in order to allow a more comfortable interview environment as well as begin to understand her desires and needs

10:20 – Discuss the initial ideas we had that may help her and the initial hopes on what she hoped to gain by participating in this program as well as timeline for project.

10:40 – Discuss how she goes about her day, investigate a walkthrough of normal schedule from wake up to go to sleep in order to find areas in daily life that may need assistance

10:55 – Discuss her likes and frustrations in life. What are some things she really enjoys doing we could make more common, are there any interactions that you have with people we could make easier

11:20 – Spend rest of time discussing takeaways from interview with interviewee as well as see if we can document real life actions of Shaude, i.e. take photos of chair, her range of motion, her doing normal actions.

Gantt Chart detailing the timeline of final project as well as deadline

Summary and Key Takeaways

Rough notes from the meeting.

With Shaude we talked about her daily tasks, what she has the most difficulty with, and how she copes. Shaude has Cerebral Palsy, uses a motorized wheelchair and has the most difficulty with her left foot. In her arms she has the most range of motion, but has struggle gripping with her right hand. She mostly uses her left hand. Besides her mobility issues, Shaude opened up about recently losing her best friend, her great aunt and her troubles coping with grief and mood. She notes that she wishes she could communicate her mood better with her mother, roommate and others helping her. She also wishes to understand them better in turn. She notes that she has the most trouble with her mood in the morning. She says that she is foggy in the mornings, it is harder in the morning for her to communicate her needs to others.

Ideation for mood display, to convey current feelings/desires without words.

In her daily tasks she noted the reach holding her back from independence. Since she is in a wheelchair she needs someone to help her retrieve anything she drops. She notes that this is most commonly a problem when she is reading a book. She first needs to request a book for someone, and then notes she will often drop a book and need help retrieving it. With her hobby of art and painting we asked her to demonstrate how she goes through this process. She didn’t note any difficulty with her process, but we noted that she needs to bend over in a seemingly uncomfortable way.

Client demonstrating current method of use for paint brush, allow designers to understand range of motion and physical limitations

Shaude holding a paintbrush to show us grip strength and positioning

Lastly we asked about how she gets from place to place. She uses a service called access, but notes she often has difficulty with it because she gets cold while waiting and has difficulty getting warmer. Besides all of these issues we got a good list of her favorite TV shows, games and books. We hope to pursue a feasible solution to one of these problems while making it personal to her and her tastes.

After Meeting Thoughts

Overall, the interview with Shaude was great, and stayed mostly according to our meeting agenda. The conversation was easy to start and she was very open to communication and chatting with us. There are instances where she brought up ideas that are potentially unachievable, such as those involving dogs, money, and traveling. The team thought it would have been better if the meeting was more physically involved, rather than verbally. For example, we asked her, with respect, to demonstrate her arms’ range of motion, and we should have done more of these where we can understand how she lives her life. She also talked a lot about her passion about art and reading, and we thought it would be very insightful to see the art she makes and the book she reads, so the team can understand more about her and her personality.

Meeting agenda: 

• Introduction/ice breaker
  • Name, major, year, interests
  • Talk about daily routine
  • Ask about her daily routine
  • Ask why she wants to participate in the project
  • Explain our personal assistive device projects
• Explanation and clarification about project goals
  • We are:
    • Trying to build prototype useful devices
    • Taking about seven weeks to go from this meeting to a reasonably high-fidelity final product
    • Documenting our process
  • 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
• Quickly go over timeline again

Project timeline.

• Understanding needs and thinking of possible technological interventions
  • Interests
  • Daily routine
  • Ask directly about difficulties
  • Follow-up asking for demonstration
  • Ask if there is anything she used to enjoy that has now become difficult
  • Experiment with quick prototypes
• Conclude
  • Thank client for their time, make sure they have your contact information.

Meeting summary and major takeaways:

First, we did some brief introductions and went over the goals of the project again. We explained what we are trying to accomplish, and what we are not trying to accomplish with the project. During this part of the discussion, we also talked about the devices we each made for our personal assistive devices to give her an idea of the types of projects we could make for this course. Then, we went over the timeline of the whole project to make sure we are all on the same page.

Going over the timeline with Darnisha.

We discovered a lot about Darnisha’s interests. She is a very creative person and likes to express that in many different ways. She enjoys painting, watercolor, collage, cut and paste, and other arts and crafts. She also loves fashion (She had just won “Best Dressed” at a camp over the weekend!). She particularly enjoys accessorizing with jewelry and beads. Her favorite colors are pink and purple. She really enjoys these activities, but her limited mobility can sometimes make it difficult for her to fully enjoy them.

We also discussed a bit of her daily routine. Some things she mentioned that she has difficulty with is putting on socks and shoes, because she is unable to bend over or pull them up. She also mentioned that she struggles to remember where she puts her phone down sometimes.

Once we had discussed some of her interests and daily routines, we talked a bit more about specific ideas. We talked about some difficulties with arts and crafts. She mentioned that she enjoys using various cut out shapes in her creations, but struggles with the action of cutting. She said that she typically uses a few set shapes in her crafts— circles, squares, rectangles, and triangles. We talked a bit about ways that we could help her cut out shapes. 

Darnisha also enjoys wearing a lot of beaded jewelry and expressed that she would like to be able to make them herself. Currently, she needs someone else to create beaded jewelry for her, because she’s unable to both hold a string still and put beads on it. We had brought some craft supplies to make small prototypes, so we asked her to string some beads on a pipe cleaner so we could see how she is currently able to handle beads. She was able to pick up the beads and string them on the pipe cleaner as long as the pipe cleaner was rigid and held in place.

Darnisha demonstrating how she uses beads.

Darnisha stringing beads on a pipe cleaner.

Finally, we discussed some ways of input and output that she is comfortable with. She prefers light as an indicator. She mentioned that she can get startled easily, so it would probably be best to not use sound. She is used to switches and joysticks, and is comfortable with typing. 

We left off with making sure that there weren’t any unanswered questions, and that we were all on the same page. As we left, Darnisha showed us one of her paintings of a beautiful ocean scene at night that was on display in the hallway.

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

Our meeting with Darnisha was great. We started off by introducing ourselves which perhaps built the conversation itself. The introductions led us into discussing our interests which made it easier for us to target areas of interest for Darnisha. Talking about and showing her our own previous projects also helped us explain the scope and context of the course, as well as this project, more clearly.

We followed our meeting agenda as our client was actually answering very to the point. Next time, we might want to ask additional follow up questions more related to her abilities as during the interview we might have spoken a lot about her interests and activities she might need help with, but we missed out on a couple of opportunities for her to engage physically with something. For example, Darnisha said that she is able to paint pretty independently, but it might’ve been beneficial to see her engage with a paint brush to see if we could make the process even easier for her.

We covered a good range with the questions we asked to Darnisha as they led from her daily routine to her interests, involving things she needs assistance with. As mentioned earlier, we could have asked her to engage more physically with things to help us know better about how she does those things in particular. As we did an activity with her about making a bracelet for her using beads and that gave us a good insight into her ability with her upper body and hands.

We as a group had a uniform opinion about the interview as we all had similar ways of questioning the client which made us realize we were actually targeting the same realm. 

Introduction

For our Intro to Physical Computing class’s final project, our group, the Durians, is working with Bill, an individual from Pittsburgh with Achromatopsia, to develop an assistive device that’s useful and relevant to his experience. To better understand his wants and needs, and get to know Bill better, we conducted an informational interview with Bill. It was conducted via zoom with the members of our group: Sapna, Harry, and Angie. Our goal for the meeting was to gain a better understanding of aspects of Bill’s daily routine, tasks or activities he enjoys doing, and spaces for an assistive device during these.

Meeting Agenda:

Given that Bill has participated in this project before and is the primary liaison for the other clients, we had a relatively straightforward interview plan and anticipated that the interview would run quickly with straightforward answers.

• Introductions: names & background
• Quick rundown of project and purpose
• Bill’s Disability description and history of the disability
• What he struggles with day to day & problems that he has come across as a result of his disability
• Specific instances of struggle with disability
• Something that he wanted to do when he was younger
• What he wants from this project
• What previous groups from this class have done for him
• Any specific requests for devices (since he knows the project pretty well)
• Next steps

Meeting summary and major takeaways:

About the Disability: From the interview, we learned a lot about Bill’s Disability. He has severe light sensitivity and took the meeting in the dark in his house. He expressed discomfort in rooms with bright ambient light, especially outdoors in sunlight or looking at a bright screen. He is also legally blind with 20/200 vision which makes facial recognition, and looking at text at distances difficult. Finally, He has Achromatopsia. Which is full color blindness.

These vision problems were birth conditions so he has lived with these all his life. He recalls challenges from growing up like wanting to be able to play baseball but not being able to see pitches clearly.

Bill seems to have the most day to day complications with issues pertaining to color. He told us that the previous IDEATE team built a clothing color identifier to help him select his wardrobe. He explicitly wanted to address an issue he has with cooking with color blindness.

Since he cant see colors, it is impossible for him to tell the doneness of meat. He would like something to help identify when meat is cooked through appropriately. Here is a quick sketch of a potential devices from the meeting:

Rough sketch of Meat Thermometer Device

As a quick aside from the project, Bill mentioned that one of the important things he wants us to take from this project is experience interacting with the disabled community. We hope that this experience, along with class visits to CLASS and interacting with other clients gives us this opportunity to experience a subset of the community that is often marginalized and overlooked.

Thoughts and Discussions

• The overall interview experience was smooth. Bill is well spoken and has plenty of experience with this project.
• The conversation was good. We got mostly all the basic information we needed to start our ideation. But we may need more specific information from Bill, for example, the specific value of screen/daylight he is sensitive to.
• Bill seemed pretty set on an idea of something that we could do that interacted specifically with his disability. In hindsight, we probably should have also focused on general assistive devices that could help with quality of life improvements, not just vision based devices.
• We intend on following up with him with alternate ideas that we came up with not related to color blindness.
• Our group had a team member shuffle, we will likely contact Bill again with the full team in order to catch everyone up

Team Name: Apples

Team Members: Cameron, Stan, Lily

In this course, 60-223: Intro to Physical Computing, our team is working with Mark, a member of Pittsburgh’s Community, Living, and Support Services (CLASS). Mark is 60 years old and lives with diminished eyesight and a brain injury that affects his memory. We held our interview with Mark over the phone on Monday, March 20, 2023. The goal of this interview was to learn about Mark’s likes, dislikes, habits, struggles, disability, and most importantly how our group could assist him by collaborating on a single physical computing gadget that will benefit him.

Meeting Agenda

Introduction/Icebreaker:

• Introduce by name & share interests (what is your hobby and why?)

Explanation & clarification about project goals:

• We are students learning about building simple electronic devices to help people in their everyday lives (give examples?) Right now we’re doing a project to help build a device that can assist someone who is currently living with a disability. 
• Our goal with you today is to talk to you about your everyday life, and understand your hobbies, your routines, the things you like to do, and then understand the things that bother you or may be difficult for you – and then over the next 7 weeks, we’ll build a gadget or device that might help solve that problem.
• To preface, we are not professionals who are aiming to build a product which will be sold commercially. We are students learning how to design and build tools and gadgets with simple electronics, and the gadget we’re going to make with you is going to be made specifically for your needs and desires only. 
• Before we start, why have you chosen to volunteer in this project? What do you hope to gain from this?
• Remember to ask for questions

Understanding needs:

Helping the client to start thinking about daily routines and activities. 

• What time do you normally wake up, and from there, how do you usually go about your day?
• What’s one activity that you do everyday that you think is really important to you?
• What’s one activity that you would like to do more? Why is that important to you? 

Product-oriented questions. Things, devices that already help the client. 

• What are some things that you do or products that you use to help support…etc. 
• What are some must-haves that you carry with you everyday or things that you keep at home to make life easier?
• What’s one thing that’s with you right now that you could tell us about? How it helps you in daily life, how you found it, how often do you replace it…

Direct questions about needs and desires.

• Are there any small things that bother you that happen everyday you wish could be changed or you wish could be improved?
• What’s one thing that happens everyday that annoys you? How do you wish that could be improved?
• What is one thing that you enjoy doing everyday that has become more difficult?
  • Why is this important to you
  • Why has it become more difficult

Closing:

• Thank you so much for participating in our interview.
• What we’ll do now  is we’ll take some time and think about the things that you talked to us about today, and start building that gadget that will help you…. We’ll talk to each other again in a few weeks time, but by that time we’ll have a mock-up of a gadget that we’ll be prepared to show you. 
• Remember to ask for questions. 

Meeting Summary & Major Takeaways

Our interview with Mark helped us gain some insight into his habits, schedule, the things he enjoys doing, and the things he finds difficult. From the start, we got a sense that Mark is someone who has a strong sense of routines and is very consistent. Before Mark’s traumatic injury due to a car accident about 40 years ago, Mark was attending Duquesne University on a full music scholarship. Yet today, he still loves playing the drums. We aren’t sure what he was playing/studying in Duquesne exactly – but his continued passion for the drums is quite telling of his consistency, and other aspects that may be helpful to us (such as fine motor skills and a strong sense of rhythm & percussion). On that topic, Mark also makes sure he stays active, which he achieves by going on walks for more than two hours every single day. When he goes outside, some things he carries with him include his thick-lensed glasses, his monocular, and a cane. For outdoor activities where he needs assistance, such as going to buy groceries, Mark usually goes with a member of staff. When we asked Mark if there were any particular annoyances and hindrances in his daily routines, Mark did not voice any particular needs or wants. Upon consulting Bill however, we learned that Mark does have a hard time remembering the schedules which are set by his staff, despite his consistency. Some other observations we made throughout the meeting, and when some of us interacted with him during class was that he also has trouble accessing information that may seem trivial to us, such as the time and weather. To access this information, Mark usually has to call a hotline, or ask someone near him. With that, we hope to develop a solution that provides Mark with easy access to this information, without adding too much burden to his existing routines, and things he has to carry. 

Thoughts

Overall, our interview with Mark was very insightful and interesting. We were able to follow through with the questions we had planned, and learned more than we hoped to know, which provided us a lot of insight into what kind of person Mark is – his interests, hobbies, likings, etc. This was especially important because our interview with Mark was done over the phone. That said, we did have a hard time initially trying to pin down a need and want that we could work on, which is probably a product of just not knowing Mark well enough to begin with. With Bill’s input however (where Bill has known Mark for 15 years), we were able to learn some things we weren’t able to during the interview, and that set us on a path where we feel like we could design something impactful and feasible for Mark.