Introduction

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.