Hi everybody !
The third edition of CHIC has officially begun. It’s hard to find the words to express how happy and excited we are to be a part of this !
Let’s start by introducing ourselves, shall we ? We are the « Learning with disabilities » (name still in construction…) team, composed by Manon 💁🏼 (ECAL), Hélène 🙋🏼 (ECAL), Lucie 🙆🏼 (EPFL), Anthony 👦🏻 (EPFL), Khalil 👦🏽 (EPFL) and Luca 👱🏽 (UNIL). With a multidisciplinary approach like this, we can only create cool stuff !
Before presenting our project a little bit more, let’s look back at the first official CHIC meeting, a few weeks ago: the ideation weekend. What a busy weekend ! We started by getting to know each other (break the ice, as they say) and then the serious stuff begun. We followed some presentations, took part in different activities (the famous marshmallow challenge, to name one) and each of us imagined different ideas of connected devices. On Sunday, 4 themes, based on the best ideas of objects, have been chosen. That’s when the four teams started to form and that ours emerged ! Tadam ! 💫
Then we met for the first time to try to have a more precise idea of our project. Our theme is very wide and -let’s be honest- not very appealing, so we quickly decided to meet as many people as possible that worked in that field. By groups of two, we met a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, child psychiatrist and a specialist teacher, to deepen our knowledge a little bit. And that’s just a start ! The good news is that they all accepted to meet us, let’s hope it will be good luck for the future ! 🍀
The first interviews helped us to focus on a more precise subject: helping children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We studied different problems, created different value proposition canvases (which was used and understood by everybody in the group, good job 👏🏼) and created different hypothesis to try and understand their needs better.
Thanks to that, three ideas grew 🌱:
-An object that would helped kids with ASD plan their day (based on an object called Time-Timer’s)
-An object that would help them communicate (based on the PECS – Picture Exchange Communication System)
-An object that they could play with and would also evaluate different skills
Those are the three ideas that we presented on our first presentation, on November 25. That was our first stressful moment: will they like them or not ?! 😱
The feedbacks were rather positive: phew ! We are on the right track 😎
Today, we decided to focus on the communication device and on the planning device (which is our favorite so far). We would like to integrate pictograms, an audio system, possibilities to mesure date automatically, a way to check and share this date and a time discipline system, but we won’t say more for now ! Hoping that this is making you a bit curious… 😏
Next step: February 19 for the kick-off weekend ! Until them, we will keep you posted of the next evolutions of our project, which will be more and more exciting for us (and for you) !
See you ! 👋🏼