Fantagstic!

March 18, 2013 • Posted in Beth Finke, blindness, Braille, technology for people who are blind, Uncategorized by

If you liked that guest post an engineering student wrote for the Safe & Sound blog last month, you’re gonna love this update on what Ebay and his classmates came up with as ways I can keep track of the colors of my clothes. Freshmen in other Design Thinking and Communication class sections were working on other projects for people with disabilities at the same time, and here are some examples

  • A man who uses a wheelchair wanted an easier way to fold up the footrests when it came to transferring into a car or a regular chair
  • A man with cerebral palsy was looking for a more efficient way to pull his trousers up on his own
  • Occupational therapists asked for a device that might encourage their clients with Parkinson’s disease to do finger exercises on-the-go
  • The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago hoped a class could figure out a way for clients with visual impairments to know how fast (and at what speed) they were walking on exercise treadmills
  • a woman who uses a wheelchair and enjoys outdoor concerts was looking for a way to slide from her chair onto the lawn, then get back into her chair again on her own when the concert was over.

Ebay’s engineering class divided into four different groups to tackle my color identification problem, and Whitney and I traveled to a Design Expo at Northwestern Saturday to hear

A poster from the Fantagstic team's presentation.

A poster from the Fantagstic team’s presentation.

all of the students present their completed projects. Sixteen students had visited our apartment in February with prototypes ranging from carabiners to iron-on tags to QR codes that my talking iPhone could read to me, and seeing (okay, touching) what these four teams had come up with in the end made me glad I’d come out of the closet about my wardrobe woes.

Right now I put a safety pin in the tag of anything I own that is black, and a paper clip on anything white. I wear other colors, too, and I memorize what color those other things are by the feel of the clothing. On their February visit, the students watched me go through my closets and asked lots and lotss of questions. In the end all four teams expanded on my tried and true safety-pin method, each team inventing different things to hang from the pin to correspond to the color of the item.

Ebay’s team came up with acrylic shapes on cloth tags called “Fantagstic!” They reasoned that cloth tags would be lightweight, so I could use two or more at a time to identify multi-colored items. The tags another team came up with were laser-cut acrylic shapes called “Depindables”. The tags all the teams came up with had been tested to withstand high temperatures in the washer and dryer. “Tag Team” was the only team to use traditional Braille code on its tags – the other teams learned from research that a majority of people who are visually impaired do not read Braille. Ebay’s team designed its own palettes of shapes (lines, S’s, C-shaped arrows, dots, corners, and triangles) that they’d tested on me earlier to confirm the shapes were easy to feel and differentiate from each other. The “Code of Many Colors” team used small glass beads on the safety pin: one bead means black, two beads mean white, and so on. Judges from engineering firms were on hand to decide on winners for each proposal, and the winner for mine was…drumroll, please…Tag Team!

The winning "Tag Team" team

The winning “Tag Team” team

The Tag Team system is more than a label to safety-pin onto my clothes. It’s also a way to organize my closet and laundry. Tag Team includes a laundry hamper that holds a number of mesh bags, each bag with a tag attached that corresponds with a single color. They figure doing laundry will be easier if I don’t mix all my clothing in the hamper, only to have to resort it all again when the wash cycle is over. “All you do is put your clothes in the bag it belongs in, take the bag out, tighten the string, and throw the bag in the washing machine.”

What about times I’m too lazy to put dirty clothing into the proper mesh bag, you ask? “No worries,” said Tag Team with pride. With the Tag Team system, everything you wear has a tag pinned inside of it. ”Wake up the next morning, feel the tag on the shirt you wore the night before, and you’ll know which bag to put it in in your Tag Team hamper.”

I had to hand it to ‘em. But if you ask me, all the teams at the design expo were winners. These kids are just freshmen, and not only have they learned about design process, but also how much it can mean to work together to help people with unusual, unique, and unmet needs. I was the biggest winner of all, though: I got to work side-by-side with these talented and thoughtful young people, and when design expo was over Saturday afternoon, I walked out with custom-made prototypes of all the tags!

Folks I talked to Saturday from the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University told me they’re looking for new project proposals from people with disabilities and organizations who work with us. If there’s something you need and you live in the Chicago area, I encourage you to submit a proposal soon.

Horvath, Donald S On March 18, 2013 at 9:21 am

As I recall, and it is difficult for me to remember 1977, it was all I could do to figure out how I could get to the laundry room before all of the pinball machines were taken. These Freshman are amazing.

Mike On March 18, 2013 at 2:22 pm

I did the same in 1975, Don. C’mon, it was hard finding a dryer and a pinball machine open at the same time. Took problem-solving skills.:)

Joan Miller On March 18, 2013 at 10:33 am

I remember talking about the design teams project of codifying your clothes. I like what they came up with…how ingenious….why didn’t I think of it? Well, that’s their challenge and they did well for you. Joan Miller

bethfinke On March 19, 2013 at 8:01 pm

Agreed!

Kim On March 18, 2013 at 11:56 am

Even the names for their teams were creative!

bethfinke On March 19, 2013 at 8:02 pm

Oh, yes. I just loved “Fantagstic!” and laughed every time they said it –they liked it, too, I could tell.

glivingston On March 18, 2013 at 1:07 pm

I shared this news with Alderman Jane Grover, whose ward includes some of Northwestern, NW student Wilson Shirley, who recently attend Evanston Day in Springfield with citizens of Evanston, and Patrick Hughes, founder of Inclusion Solutions in Evanston. Really good stuff Beth.

bethfinke On March 19, 2013 at 8:04 pm

Wow! I hope they enjoy the post as much as you did. Thanks for spreading the word, Gretchen.

Benita Black On March 20, 2013 at 9:41 am

Practical creativity: that’s what the world needs more of.

bethfinke On March 20, 2013 at 10:01 am

Yes, that and, as lyricist Hal David liked to say…love.

Deborah Darsie On March 24, 2013 at 12:49 am

Their solutions all sound like they could be successful, since different people have different communication styles and adaptive skill levels.

The only ‘problem’ with the Tag Team solution is that Whitney won’t be able to help put the clothes in the correct mesh bags…

(grin) Meant as a mobility assist dog puppy raiser….

bethfinke On March 24, 2013 at 5:43 am

Ha! I’ll have to tell the Tag Team to get back to work!
I first learned about mobility assistance dogs years ago when Dog Fancy assigned me a story about the number of helper dogs increasing across the country. My job was to spell out the distinctions between categories: assistance dogs, service dogs, guide dogs, therapy dogs. I interviewed a man in Brevard County, Fla. Whose five-year-old Black Labrador Retriever Zeb had been trained to pull clean laundry from the dryer and push elevator buttons for him. Fantagstic!

Judy Spock On March 28, 2013 at 12:39 am

I told old friend Ed Granai that you were coming to Johnson Vermont and that he might enjoy meeting you. He was a friend of Anne Poindexter Fischer at Antioch College, too. A man of goodwill. Hope all is going well with the Fantagstics! XOJudy Spock

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