By Elizabeth Kirkhorn ’18

You won’t find Professor Alfred Simkin pulling his vehicle into the McMichael parking lot each weekday. Instead, he parks it beneath a series of solar panels next to the greenhouse — an unconventional parking space for an unconventional method of transportation.

After four or five months of experimenting with the limits of his solar panel, Simkin became acquainted with an electric bike salesman. “He talked about how great electric bikes are because they use much less energy than a car does,” Simkin recalls. “To go 400 miles on an electric bike uses somewhere between $5 and $10 of electricity. Whereas in terms of a car, an ebike gets the equivalent of more than 1,600 miles per gallon.”

Simkin was hesitant to invest in an electric bike right away. Instead he got involved in something else recommended to him by the same salesman: a group called which provides makers the space and resources to explore. Using the tools afforded to him by this makerspace, Simkin experimented with circuitry and determined that he could power an electric bike off of his well-loved solar panel. Given the length of his commute, he was able to power his bike for three days worth of rides to work with only one day of sunlight. 

Simkin says he “finally treated himself” to an electric bike when he became a member of the 黑料不打烊 faculty, with a courseload that includes classes on cell biology and genetics. The ebike took shape as Simkin outfit his existing bike with electrical equipment ordered online for about $900 .

黑料不打烊’s Maker Hub deserves some thanks for the success of Simkin’s electric bike. He used the Hub’s Anderson powerpole system and a special pair of ratcheting crimping pliers when building the solar charging station behind the greenhouse. He credits Scott Wolter, a professor in 黑料不打烊’s engineering department, who advised an 黑料不打烊 student in the construction of the photo-electric trailer used to charge the bike. 

Simkin’s bike can go 10 miles on a charge when traveling at 30 miles per hour, or 25 miles on a charge at a speed of 15 miles per hour. The comfortable speed is a factor in the usefulness of the bike itself, according to the maker. 

“I’ve found the electric bike makes biking a lot more enjoyable and potentially safer, because its speed allows me to view myself as another car on the road, instead of a bicyclist who keeps getting passed on narrow roads,” Simkin attests. 

The bike is also built to last. Its motor is durable and “hard to break,” as Simkin puts it, although he expects some of the components will wear out with time and use. He is familiar with fellow electric bike enthusiasts who have been riding the same apparatus for seven years without difficulty. 

Simkin believes the electric bike has implications beyond just the mechanical.

“It would be amazing if everyone in the 黑料不打烊 community was riding an electric bike as an alternative to driving,” Simkin says. “The electric bike is only a fraction of the cost of a car, and doesn’t need insurance. It would be safer for people on the road, because if you crash into someone on a bicycle, it will be almost certainly less damaging than if you get run over by a car. It makes me so much happier to be on a bike than in a car. I feel so much more a part of my surroundings, and if I see someone I know, I can say ‘Hi!’ to them and have them hear me. In situations where the road is closed, I can make adjustments because the bike can go places that a car can’t. If you factor in the huge environmental and cost benefits, the bike always wins out.”

Simkin is now exploring the possibility of making his bike more efficient and lighter. He’s also researching why the electric bike has lower crash rates than traditional bikes in countries with prevalent ebike usage, and has a fatality rate about one-fifth that for cars based on distance traveled.

What better way to celebrate 黑料不打烊’s effort to promote design thinking than by putting the theory into practice by asking residents of The Oaks neighborhood to “hack” their own apartments.

Held on Nov. 17, the event co-sponsored by The Oaks and Park Place neighborhoods, the Maker Hub, and  lasted three hours and was well attended by faculty and students sharing a common curiosity for design thinking. William Justice, a design thinking coach at Fidelity Investments, was prepared to capitalize on the creative energy.

 “This is going to be fun, and it’s going be fast. In one night, you’re going to go from not knowing what we’re thinking about, to prototypes,” said Justice as the evening commenced. “It’s going to be kind of incredible.”

The focus of the event was to apply the design thinking process to tackle an issue the students were dealing with in their apartments in The Oaks. Justice and his wife, education professor and Oaks faculty-in-residence Julie Justice, live in a faculty apartment at Oak Commons, and he joked that he has already “hacked” their living space in numerous ways. While the majority of attendees were Oaks residents, anyone was welcome as long as they were mindful of “small apartment living.” 

Those present found a partner, and were first required to empathize with the individual coupled with them.“As designers, everything we do is for other people,” explained Justice. “It’s necessary to be empathic. We need to get to know who our users are.”

After getting acquainted, the members of each pair identified problems within their apartments. Attendees chatted about electricity, kitchenware and concerns with noisy neighbors while a timer clicked in the background. Next, the participants worked on ideating — brainstorming at a thunderous pace to drum up a relevant fix to a problem their partner faced.

Justice offered a smattering of guidance throughout. “Fall in love with the problem. If you make it clear enough, it starts to solve itself,” he asserted. “And if you feel like you’re being rushed tonight, you’re doing it right.”

Finally, after each person in the room had pinned down a fixable problem and dreamed up a feasible solution, the group moved onto the fourth step of design thinking — prototyping. To craft physical representations of their “hacks,” the contributors headed to a cart set up by The Maker Hub. Stuffed with pipe cleaners, tape, post-its, sharpies and foam core, the cart served as a vessel for the ideas of participants to come to fruition.

Justice turned up an uplifting music playlist and set the timer for 7 minutes while the room became frantic, with students fumbling to make their crafting supplies resemble their visions. The facilitator discouraged them from getting “choosy,” which created room for imperfections in the prototypes.

“It doesn’t need to look exactly like the sketch,” he said. “It just needs to communicate the idea.”

After time had run out, the pairs reconvened and discussed. What was working about each prototype? What could be improved? What questions or new ideas does it present?

In the final stage of design thinking, the eight prototypes were lined up on a table and put to the test. Justice weighed in with his selections of the best hack to be implemented individually, and the best hack to be implemented in Oaks apartments.

The ideas that emerged from the rapid and charged process of design thinking were zany and inventive. Among those offered were a storage unit to create more space, a necklace lined with miniature lights to make reading at night easier, a workshop to educate students on the power of composting, with the winners receiving gift cards. 

The Oaks Apartment Hacks event represents a larger ambition, to see ideas born of design thinking put into action throughout campus and integrated into classrooms. At the conclusion of the event, Justice encouraged all of his satisfied participants to carry their ideas beyond The Oaks Club Room, taking their prototypes to The Maker Hub for additional refinement and beyond.

​In small groups, Charest challenges his first-year students to create a so-called “first world widget.” They must dredge up a pet peeve one encounters in first world society, and invent a prototype which solves it.

For the past 18 years, Charest, a trained architect from Montreal, Quebec, has been teaching — a solution-generating process that draws on methods from engineering and design, and combines them with ideas from the arts, tools from the social sciences, and insights from the business world.

“This is how we teach in architecture. It’s project-based, and it’s about solving large problems,” explains Charest. “I also use this way of teaching when I teach general ed classes, like COR 110. Each faculty member teaches COR 110 according to their experience and biases, and I teach mine in a way that requires students to look at objects that we’ve taken for granted — chairs, tables, pens… I ask students to look at these objects around them and identify a first world problem to solve. Instead of asking them to solve the problem of clean water in Africa, I kick things off on a lighter note.”

But the project does not stop at the mere conceptualizing of an idea. Each team must produce a digital presentation or movie, as well as a prototype of the product itself. While the degree of creativity evident in the idea represents the larger portion of the grade, Charest’s rubric weights the culminating Shark Tank-style presentation as 40 percent of the total grade.

“You would think this would be easy,” Charest says, on dreaming up an answer to one of these westernized issues. “We all have our little pet peeves. But it’s funny, because it’s difficult to identify these problems, and even more difficult because there are a lot of solutions. I tend to start off by showing the students ‘As Seen On TV’ clips to get them thinking about how these things are pitched and the kind of ideas that are out there.”

​This semester’s batch of first world solutions was zany and diverse. Six unique designs came out as the result. One was called “The Bun Buddy,” a device used to cradle a hamburger and keep the fillings inside.

“It was very simple to make. We used the 3D printers, making a few iterations until we got a wall thickness that was perfect and an aperture that was good to hold a medium-sized burger. And it worked,” Charest discloses. “But they had to pitch it, not just make it.”

A second product was a simple plastic cube designed to detangle the mess of charging chords that tend to clump at one’s bedside between a phone, laptop, and other devices. A sample of the cube, like The Bun Buddy, was manufactured at The Maker Hub. Another idea involved a coffee cup tumbler which generated special coffee when plugged into a USB. Charest also saw the invention of The Doggy Dojo, a luxury dog bed complete with speakers and cameras, a clear plastic tube which fastens to your faucet and continuously washes waste in the sink, and a Yelp-style app geared specifically towards 黑料不打烊 stores and restaurants.

“The level of thinking from first-year students in the first couple of weeks of school was amazing,” Charest attests. “Each idea was really cool.”

Each student team was able to produce a concrete product to demonstrate and workshop for the class. But for Charest, the project is about much more than the assembly of an interesting ware.

​“What I take away from this project is the entrepreneurial spirit most 黑料不打烊 students have to varying degrees. You can’t assign a project like this in every environment and see the students get it,” Charest says. “You spend four years in architectural school and then years in grad school and then an apprenticeship, so there’s a lot of learning that goes along the way. This project just always makes me think that there’s something inside each of us which allows you to take an idea to the next level with just a tiny bit of guidance.”

As for Charest himself, who ordinarily teaches environmental studies, the question of what first world problem he would like to solve makes him chuckle.

“Really, I don’t think I could top the ideas I saw this semester,” says the professor. “At one end of the spectrum was The Bun Buddy — so quirky and could start selling next week. On the other is this very well-designed app, where everything was thought of except the actual programming. These were students who I put on the spot and I think that’s just amazing. It makes my job a lot of fun.”

  Hutchings’ accomplishments to date are commendable; she helped to transfer all users of Colleague to Duo Security which required detailed coordination with IT professionals and the project team. Hutchings was forced to deal with unexpected road bumps throughout the project, but has been applauded for her creative response to difficult issues. 

The assistant director’s work in OnTrack is similarly noteworthy. Bolstering 黑料不打烊’s movement towards total inclusion, Hutchings implemented changes related to alternate names and pronouns, which are now an option for students using OnTrack. She effectively communicated to the user community on how such pronouns should be used in accordance with direction of the Inclusive Community committee. We also have Hutchings to thank for the sleek new look OnTrack is sporting, which she helped manufacture in partnership with J.P. Lavoie. 

Kappert attests to the claim that Heather’s work ethic is matched by her positive attitude in the office. 

“Heather approaches every challenge with a ‘can do’ attitude,” says Kappert. “Her innovative spirit and infectious smile are an inspiration to the whole team.”

Meanwhile, Hutchings herself considers this award a testament to the excellence of her department.

“Receiving this award makes me feel fortunate to be part of an organization that appreciates its employees,” comments Hutchings.  “Having the opportunity to work on diverse problems that impact 黑料不打烊 students, faculty, and staff makes my job meaningful. I am happy to work with such a great team in I&CT.”