Cambridge Salt & Pepper Workshop
This workshop ( organized and created by Cambridge University ) was held for the length of an entire week, and during that week we were tasked with the creation of taking an already existing product ( for this activity we used Salt & Pepper shakers as our idea ) and reinvent it to make it easier to handle, use and understand for the large amount of disabled people in the world whom may have trouble using these standard devices due to unfortunate diseases, accidents, afflictions or any other disabilities.
DAY 1
On the first day on the workshop we were joined by a class of grade nine science students and were introduced to our task at hand. The presentation gave us insight as to how to think about the issues that people with disabilities might have using modern day, conventional Salt & Pepper shakers. After the presentation we formed groups of ~6 students and used these special types of glasses and hand attachment to simulate visual and motor function impairment, those given these devices attempted to complete a task assigned to them, such as the opening of a pill bottle or the reading of a map. ( Will attempt to find photos of the use but I may have misplaced them. ) Once we were finished with the simulation of the faults that occur within everyday products, we were then given the task to come up with a design that will aid people who are impaired in some way.
Our groups design was catered more towards those of visual impairment, so we focused heavily on colours, braille and text.
DAY 2
During the 2nd day of this week long workshop, we continued with the groups we had created with the grade nine class and went over new material with our instructors ( our teachers. ) Continuing with the understanding of how everyday activities could be incredibly difficult for someone even with the most minor of disabilities.
DAY 3
On the third day, we as a class were given simple drawing activities of what would be wacky, and fun ideas of everyday objects ( ex. chairs ) to get our creativity flowing and to spark inspiration towards the growth of "outside the box" thinking/ideas. We then used this sort of inspiration to create new ways of using these devices. Our groups concept was the idea of a electric style Salt & Pepper shakers, that would dispense at the push of a button and vibrate to dispense the Salt and or Pepper for you and would limit the amount dispensed.
DAYS 4 + 5
The task assigned to us on the final two days was to use the knowledge, ideas and concepts we have learned and created to design a visual and a physical model of our Salt & Pepper shakers. My friend and I ( As the grade nines were no longer with us and another member of our group departed to assist another ) chose to stick with the idea we conceptualized on the third day of this activity. We started out with thinking of our additives to our concept to make it more universally beneficial to all people, and once we were done with the adding of last minute ideas we proceeded to make a base model of what it would look like and the inner mechanisms on both paper and Blender. When this process was completed, we collected some materials ( mostly cardboard and a few scraps of others ) to make a physical representation of what we had designed.
