05/29/2017 – 06/02/2017

On Friday of last week (05/06/2017), Anne and I outlined our goals for the summer with the assistance of Ben and Dr. Siek. These include a needs assessment and a rough design of a toolbox for older crafters. We will also assist in hosting workshops that introduce these older crafters to Arduino and allow us to learn their craft. Past workshops have been spread out over a couple of days – so far each workshop has been conducted in a series of three sessions, with each session lasting two hours. The first session is a show-and-tell session where the older adults teach the researchers about their craft. The second session is used by the researchers to teach the crafters about electronics and/or paper circuits. The third and final session is a brainstorming or low-fidelity prototyping session in which the crafters give their inputs on the integration of the electronics in the workshop and what they envision a crafting toolkit to be. This focus on user-centered design will challenge our understanding of what older crafters know and any biases that we may have. Anne and I were assigned five papers to read over the weekend: Summary of MakerWear: A Tangible Approach to Interactive Wearable Creation for ChildrenNever Too Old: Engaging Retired People Inventing the Future with MaKey MaKeyA Craft Approach to Health Awareness in ChildrenSuccessful Leisure in Independent Living Communities: Understanding Older Adults’ Motivations to Engage in Leisure Activities, and Designing for the Third Hand: Empowering Older Adults with Cognitive Impairment through Creating and Sharing.

Because of the observance of Memorial Day, our meeting times with Dr. Siek and Ben are a little disorganized this week. Our regular meeting times will begin the week of 06/05/2017. Anne and I will meet with Dr. Siek once a week on Thursdays at 9:00 a.m. and with Ben on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of each week from 1:00 – 2:00 p.m.

I did not come into work on Monday, May 29. However, I read and thoroughly summarized papers related to our work on adult crafters at my dormitory.

On Tuesday, May 30, I continued reading work related to our three pillars of literature: older adults, maker technology, and creativity. I found abundant papers to read, thanks to the forward and backward citations I did for the five papers that Ben originally assigned to us for reading. From 12:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m., Anne and I met with Ben to discuss our goals for the following week, the outline for the Related Work and Methods sections of our paper, and our ultimate deliverables, which are a participatory design workshop for older crafters, a tentative toolkit, and a research paper written by Anne and me. Possible publication venues for research paper are CHI, UIST, CSCW, or UbiComp.  After the work day, I headed to Starbucks and read two more papers! A link to notes from our meeting with Ben is below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxisCNINC5BJZGFld2hCREowMW8/view?usp=sharing

On Wednesday, May 31, I began the outline for the Related Work and Methods section of our paper. I continued reading academic papers that filled gaps in my understanding of participatory design techniques and the field of crafting and electronics. Anne and I met with Ben at 1:00 p.m. to construct a timeline, or a plan of action, for the remaining 8 weeks:

  • Week 2
    • Literature review
    • Explore maker technology
    • Grove kits
  • Weeks 3-4
    • Prep PD Workshop
    • Explore MakerTech
      • Laser cutting
      • Arduino
    • Toolkit
      • Pick stuff to buy (W3)
    • Ben is gone at end of W4
  • Weeks 5-6
    • PD Workshop
    • Make an example object
    • Toolkit
      • Try things
  • Weeks 7-8
    • Toolkit
      • Make decisions on what to buy and buy it
    • PD Workshop
      • Finish
      • Analyze
  • Weeks 9-10
    • Write!
    • Toolkit descriptions

We also discussed the subsections (and subsubsections) that the Related Work and Methods sections would consist of. The Related Work will be split up into two parts: Creativity and Maker Technology. The Creativity subsection will be divided into Art Therapy and Health Benefits. The Maker Technology subsection will be divided into three parts: Working with Hands, Maker Technology for Children, and Generalized Maker Technology. The Methods section will consist of  two parts, which are Participatory Design Workshops and Toolkit Design.

During the Wednesday workshop, the REU students learned about design journals, reading papers, and outlining.

On Thursday, June 1, Anne and I completed our Related Work and Methods sections for the paper. We also added citation trees for the first five papers we read to the ShareLaTeX document. In addition, I read a couple of papers related to Art Therapy and Maker Technology.

On Friday, June 2, Anne and I met with Dr. Siek at 9:00 a.m. to discuss our outline on ShareLaTeX and possible paths to take with our paper, which include writing a “methods” paper discussing our participatory design techniques or exploring the details of a toolkit for older adult crafters. At 10:00 a.m., the ProHealth REU students met to discuss the work they had completed this week and their goals for next week (as well as the fashion trends they would like to bring back!). Afterwards, Dr. Siek introduced us to 3-D printing and laser cutting, which was super exciting! I also experimented with the Grove toolkit and searched the Adafruit and Sparkfun websites for inspiration for our toolkit.

 

Food of the Week: Freshly made sugar cookies with white chocolate, Reese’s pieces, and cream cheese icing from Baked

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxisCNINC5BJelc0cVVTQU8tRDA/view?usp=sharing

Also… I met W. Kamau Bell!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxisCNINC5BJbzlqdHVNLTgxWTQ/view?usp=sharing