How can our group help Molly navigate difficult areas around the school, by using physical landmarks, braille and other techniques that would  allow her to travel around the school with more ease and independence?

For our accessibility project we decided to create landmarks that would help Molly navigate around problem areas around the school. Originally our idea was to create different textures to put on locker walls. However, we soon realized that Molly would need the landmarks on the floor so she can sweep over them with her cane. So we decided to create plates to put on the bottom of lockers. The areas we chose were corners in the upstairs hallways. We created two different textures to indicate either left or right. Our group worked through multiple failed attempts at printing and came up with two different prototypes.

One with a gritted texture and one with vertical stripes. The design part of this project was mostly done by myself and Julian. We worked out the details and discussed different ideas for how to do this project. We worked through our different ideas and came up with the design.

Since the two of them had previous experience, Kian and Martin worked through the actual development and 3d printing of the prototype. Kian went into a program and created the models and files for our prototype. The two of them worked together to troubleshoot any issues with the printing and watched over our prototypes.

I think that my role in this project was one of the mediator. It was different to work in a group with my friends, since normally I work in a group chosen for me, or with mostly girls. There was some conflict in different stages of this project. In the design portion there were some differences in opinion between some of my group mates. I felt like I had to try to mediate what everyone was saying and make sure that there were no negative feelings.

I think that one thing I learned when doing another design project is that problem solving is always important, and that failing a couple of times isn’t the worst thing to ever happen. In the future If  I were do another design project I would prioritize creating an intial prototype as fast as possible. For these kinds of projects I realised that as much as you brainstorm making mistakes and then editing and changing the design as you go, would probably make the process a lot more interactive and smooth.

When working with the SME I realized that sometimes ideas that you have don’t always work as the perceived ideas we have about others are not always true. Since we are now knowledgable in this topic we originally, made some assumptions with our initial prototypes that would not be feasible at all. We also didn’t originally know about the landmark system that personnes with vision disabilities use.

My favourite part about this project was having creative freedom when choosing what we are working on, how we want to tackle it. In the future I will remember this project as one of the few where I got to have more independence. I will also remember it as an amazing opportunity to work with Molly and gain a new perspective on problem solving.