What is Mouse Design League?

Mouse Design League is a year-long after school design and technology program for high school students who are self-proclaimed geeks, techies, artists, activists, innovators, and tinkerers. We meet regularly every Tuesday from  4:00 pm to 6:00 pm and sometimes on Saturdays for special events, such as our annual design retreat.

Over the course of the program, students brainstorm, prototype, and present their Legacy Project, a new technology which addresses a social need, while building their skills and exploring career pathways with technology mentors across diverse professional settings. Throughout my four years at MDL, I learned valuable skills in communication, design, innovation, and leadership.

Our Design League projects last year (2016-2017) included:

• Electra-Wallet: A device designed to help those with limited motor skills to easily access their credit cards, metro cards, and more without having to manipulate zippers or buttons or card slots
• Locus:  A wearable add-on designed to increase the freedom and independence of people, especially those with communication limitations and non-verbal disabilities to help family, teachers, or personal aids find their location via GPS and SMS texting
• Omni-Joy: An accessible, portable game controller designed to make playing games more fun and social for all users, and more usable for people with limited mobility
• Salvaje Adataple Clothing: A line of jackets and other clothing designed for people with limited mobility and people in wheelchairs to allow them to put on and take off their outer layers with more ease

How Does MDL Relate to CAS?

Throughout my four years at MDL, I have accumulated approximately 400 hours of participation. The nature of MDL, from the human-centered design process to the long ten months of prototyping and innovating, can be applied to two area of CAS – Creativity and Service. MDL applies to creativity due to how we design and innovate unique inventions aimed to improve the lives of our interviewees. Thus, the interview process and the many notes and sketches that followed reflect the creative aspects of MDL. For service, MDL was aimed to create assistive technology for those with disabilities. Our work with Adapt Community Network (Formally known as United Cerebral Palsy) allows us to understand and empathize with their needs. As a result, we are able to accurately respond to their circumstances to the best of our abilities in ways which society has not.

My Personal Contributions

For my first two years, my group and I worked consistently on our project Artillo, a pillow-like device which enables those with reduced motor function to continue practicing art as a hobby.

 

The idea developed during interviews with Jane, a woman who suffered from Cerebral Palsy, a severe motor disability.

Before her condition worsened to being virtually paralyzed, she always had a paintbrush in hand.

 

Through MOUSE, a non-profit that designs accessible technology for people with disabilities, we emulated what little neck motion she had as brush strokes through sensors in the pillow. Seeing her face radiate with joy instilled in me not only happiness, but responsibility. This is my destiny. In her eyes, I saw my future: a dream of bridging the gap in accessibility.

Artillo proceeded to win a $2000 grant from Urban Arts Partnership and was invited to the White House Frontiers Conference at Carnegie Mellon. What started off as a high school project quickly became a beacon of hope.

For more on Artillo, please click here

Personal Reflections

My Role in Artillo Group – Each and every group member has their own set of talents and skills. We had members who excelled in art and design while others excelled in coding and construction, such as myself. Due to my more extensive coding background, I was put in charge of coding the software by my group leader, Omar Nasr. Learning a new coding language was very difficult to me. I had originally thought it would be incredibly easy for someone like me. However, I hilariously overestimated my knowledge. Processing, the coding platform we used, and Firmatta, the software code used to communicate between computers and external devices, were so complex that it took my doing research and sifting through Reddit to resolve major issues. Code is very sensitive. If even a single piece is wrong, even if the issue is capitalization of a variable when it should be lower case, then the entire software will not work. I learned to fail forward and learn from mistakes as I kept tackling each new problem head on.

Leadership – The project cycle for Artillo and LaZerLaneZ taught me much about leadership, from ways to engaging with group members to methods of approaching new issues within the group and outside of it. I believe this is why Maggie, the MDL Project Manager, assigned me as the group leader to guide newer members both in my third and fourth year. However, leadership has never been my forte. Most of the new members during my third year had very strong individual skills but lacked the social skills to communicate and work together. As a result,  I was unable to encourage nor guide the group, leaving me to do all the major work, from code construction to design. Now, I am currently in my fourth year, and once again I have new kids, leaving me as the leader. However, unlike last year, the new MDL students lack both social skills and talent, they do not know what to do, when or where, nor how. ON TOP OF THAT, they lack the interest to even ask how. Every time I show them and try to encourage them to take interest, they zone out. I do not understand how to help people learn and grow when they do not have the desire to do so. This for me is a real challenge because my first year was filled with guidance and friendship. I am still really close to my group members from them and even meet them from time to time to hang out. They were very accepting and open to me. How can I do the same for this new group? What steps should I take? I hope to find the answer soon before the project cycle begins.

Attendance – Due to the overwhelming burden of IB school work and college applications, my attendance at MDL suffered. There have been many days where I did not make it to meetings due to either having a large amount of work to do and/or mental or physical fatigue. These factors, and the fact that my new group lacked any interest in what we were doing, did not motivate me to make the long commute to wall street every Tuesday. Now that college applications are over, my attendance has become much more regular. However, I am still unmotivated as my group has become a persistent issue.