Lab Notes

Design Lab Intern Ana Cuza reflects on a talk from Dr. Kristie Dotson about combining research and activism.

Unlike some of my peers at the Design Lab and in the School of Information, I am not by default a very visually-oriented person when it comes to thinking, learning, or expressing myself. In order to engage with this perspective a bit more, I decided to attend a Visual Thinking Seminar facilitated by a UMSI alumnus, Katie McCurdy. Specifically, the seminar was about “drawing for meaning” -- drawing as a thinking aid, a problem solving strategy, and a communication style. This was referred to as a “functional” drawing, as opposed to an artistic drawing.

For the third year in a row, the Shapiro Design Lab and the Library Student Engagement Ambassadors hosted a Valentine’s Day event with the Design Lab’s printing press. Students and staff from across the campus came to Shapiro Undergraduate Library the day before Valentine’s Day to make cards for their loved ones and drink hot chocolate.

On February 7th, the Shapiro Design Lab and the University of Michigan Prosthetics Club participated in the Emerson School Science Fair. Emerson School is a private K-8 institution with a dedicated staff and over 150 students. The theme for the science fair was "Problem Solvers: Using the Design Thinking Process to Find Solutions for Everyday Problems." Of the 150 students, the majority of them participated in the Fair. Projects ranged from 3rd grade mechanical card dealers, to a student in the 8th grade that created an AI that mapped cities for disaster relief. The Science Fair stretched from the school gym, through the halls, and into the large auditorium. The large auditorium is where the Shapiro Design Lab found itself tabling.

What brought you to the Shapiro Design Lab?
I actually came to the SDL in search for a new job after my work study job ended. I thought that I would make the most of losing my work study and find something that had less mundane activities and more interesting work. With a Mechanical Engineering degree, I thought I could perhaps apply my knowledge outside of the classroom and project groups. I came across the SDL application by word and applied! After an interview with Justin, I was hired! That was the Fall of 2017, and I've been having a blast here ever since.

With a background in physics and criminal justice, and now learning architecture, I’ve been trying to find a way to combine the different areas of my education and, most importantly, how to align them with one of my passions - open and inclusive accessibility. It is easy to connect physics with criminal justice, in the world of forensics, and there are some clear connections between physics and architecture, at least in mechanics. But bringing those two connections together has been challenging. The Raoul Wallenberg Lecture speaker, Eyal Weizman, opened my eyes to possibilities and concepts I had never thought of.

Recently, I attended an event known as Inclusion of Individuals with Disabilities: Using Your Skills and Gifts to Create Access in Your Community. It was part of the Center for the Education of Women + Inspire Workshop series. It was such a unique workshop, because workshops gloss over the effects disabilities have on people have them. I personally loved that the speaker, Jacqueline Kaufman, went into detail about disabilities and incorporating deafness with cochlear's. Sometimes, these details are excluded from the conversation. To formally introduce her, she is an Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Michigan Medical school.

I make little sculptures and models in my spare time, so I wanted to try to 3D print something that would be difficult to make by hand. My guiding thought was not ‘Gee, what would be cool to make?’ as much as it was ‘What would a 3D printer be uniquely well-suited to do?’. The Design Lab’s Canvas page recommends looking through sites like Thingiverse where people share different design files in order to get started imagining what to print.

This month, I decided to try out a training module on data analysis with Python. While, overall, I think I may have a more conservative outlook on what “Big Data” can help us achieve than some of my peers in the School of Information, there’s no doubt that being conversant with data is becoming increasingly important for a diverse range of fields and tasks. By conversant with data, I mean being able to effectively retrieve, handle, manage, read, describe, understand, repair, process, transform, analyze, and store it, among other things. Being data-fluent is fast becoming an expectation for librarians, and will especially be necessary if I go on to work with research data as a career, as I am currently planning. Additionally, and most germane to the goals of the Shapiro Design Lab, handling and working with volunteer-collected data in varied forms is a key task (and some might say obstacle) of citizen science projects, particularly large scale ones. While a two-hour training module is not going to make anyone an expert on working with data, it’s not a bad place to get an introduction.

Have you ever wondered how does google 3D map work? Or, have you ever observed 3D objects in games or movies that look so real, it is impossible for you to believe that it was modeled and rendered artificially?

Well, the answer might be Photogrammetry. Photogrammetry is often defined as the science of taking measurements from photographs. In a simpler term, you can scan an object and create your own 3D model through a free software just by taking a few overlapping pictures of the model. Need fancy cameras? No. You can even use your cellphone camera and take some pictures by hand. Benefit of using photogrammetry over laser scanning is that photogrammetry can provide a vrml file format, that means that it would also include the surface colors of the scanned object. Whereas, laser scanning fails to capture the colors of the surfaces and can only provide an stl file with no color data.