Media:

I would personally say that this picture of Tim trying out our original prototype sums up my whole journey throughout this project. It is so cool that we actually got to, not exactly make something but come up with an idea and make it come to life. I am so glad that we are able to make even a small difference in Tims life.

These two photos explain what we did because you can see how much thinking and simplifying we had to do to make a suitable remote for Tim to use. As you can see he used to be using this very complicated remote with many unnecessary and small buttons, throughout this project my group and I simplified this all the way down to the little box you can see in his hands in the second picture. Though is is still (and may never be) perfect it shows how much work we put into this task.

These two photos are our finished products, on the left is our personal prototype that we created with the help of tinkered, and on the right it the remote we ordered off-line for Tim to use in his everyday life. I think a really cool aspect of these two is that my group and I designed our “remote” before we even saw professional ones, but in the end they looked and worked super similarly.

How we helped:

Our experience began when we had the FaceTime call with Tim and his daughter Nicola, they told us that they think that it would be better and easier for Tim if he had a remote with only a few simple buttons. My group and I automatically thought this would be a great idea for our project. We thought that a remote is for sure a challenge but also super possible. We got straight to work and started to brainstorm ideas on what we wanted our remote to look like. Simple things like how many buttons should it have, the size and any other minor details. We came up with that little coloured box I showed before. This design had the bare minimum for Tim which was exactly what he asked for. We connected with Tim and Nicola again, made some little adjustments, and we also went onto makers making change to get a little inspiration for time to time. In about two weeks our design was printed and ready to go so, Mr. Robinson took it to Tim to show him our prototype and except for some minor changes he really like it! The only problem was that we didn’t know how we were going to get all of the wiring in there and actually make it work so that Tim could connect it to his TV.  We went online and bought a simplified remote that looks almost exact to our design. Now we have a working product that will make Tims life a little bit easier.

What I have learned:

This project has taught my group and I many new things that I don’t think we would have been introduced to if we had not participated. A few examples are 3D printing, thorough critical and creative thinking skills, perseverance and unique designing skills. This is the first time that I have really gotten to be in the process of 3D printing. It was so cool to see the precise steps that are taken in order to make a finished product. This is also where we learned some super cool stuff about designing. We spent a lot of time making sure our prototype was the best it could be and the way we did that was we spent hours figuring out how to design and create the object that we were imagining in our heads. This was  for sure challenging since we had never used that program before but in the big picture we learned something super cool and useful in this day and age. As for the creative and critical thinking, we definitely used these throughout the whole project. examples of this is when we were designing the remote we needed to use our creative and critical thinking to make sure we fulfilled all of Tims needs. personally I have met every learning goal that I set for myself, they were that I want to learn more about 3D printing, which I definitely did. My second learning goal was that I wanted to figure out a way to actually help Tim with our product, and I think we were very successful at this. I am so excited to see if we made Tims life just a little bit easier.

Debrief of the experience:

My group and I worked very well together, and we stuck by the motto we created the first day we got together. that motto was to bounce off each others ideas and to make everyone feel needed, which I feel we completely accomplished. we all had very strong ideas that we wanted to use and we somehow found ways to make sure everyone was happy. we were a really good and string group who I would work with again. I think a few things we did well as a team were, one we actually brought out something very practical that Tim can use in his everyday life. two, we all made sure the work was split evenly. finally three we stayed on task and made sure our parts were done when they were supposed to be done. at the moment I can’t really think of something that we could work on, I think all of us overall did a super great job! in conclusion I really enjoyed this whole project. I did not think I would when we started but once I realized that we were being given the chance to make an actual change I think I got interested. it is still amazing to me that basically everyone in the class came up with a different idea of how to make a difference in Tims life. I am really happy we got to do this project and I hope to do more like it in the future.