A campus behind Meng Café

Describe your observations on their classes

       We observed their paper crafting class, wood crafting class, and a personal therapy class for autism kids. Among them, the wood crafting class leaves the most significant impression for me. According to the introduction of the teacher, the kids in this class have different levels of capability. I notice that some students are very good and familiar at rolling the paper scrip. I tried it as well, it is not an easy task at all. I was amazed by their patience in doing such simple repetitive works for a long time. Besides, we also noticed that some students in the class are very active and outgoing. One boy would drag everyone to take a look and praise his work. Another girl is talented at doing creative work to decorate the patterns of their work. Nearly all of them were very excited to meet new people. I feel their sense of happiness when doing handcraft and communicating and interacting with humans.

       For the autism therapy class, the student was also very excited to play with us. During the class, the teacher paid much effort to attract the student’s attention. The student was always intending to running around and do things he wants instead of following the teacher’s instruction. I think this class may fail to meet its designed outcomes but the student had great fun, which I think is more important.

What technologies can improve their learning?

       When observing the wood crafting class, I noticed that a student is trying to install the string to the wooden ukulele. He tried many times but failed every time. He then referred to us about the solution to it. However, I did not know the mechanism either. Then only thing I could do at that time is to tell him that “try again and observe how others achieve it” and wait for the teacher’s help. At that moment, I realized that they have the desires and needs of self-learning. I suddenly realized that sometimes it is not they are unable but we are desolation them from getting information. We may not have the chance to achieve and address this issue for this course. But I think it would be helpful to build an online community for students with similar disabilities. Therefore, they can learn from each other reciprocally. They may get the learning resources easier and more accessible.

Overall experience and observation

       Again, the direct feeling for this field trip for me is that every individual is different. Everyone has a certain shining point and a special personality. Everyone views the world differently. Although addressing a big social problem for these disables is very significant, however, for every individual, they also have their own colorful lives that need our attention. Next semester, we will also work with individuals to address a small but important issue for a single person. It may have only a small effect on the whole society but it may bring a big impact from the individuals’ perspective.

Meng Café

Describe your interaction with employees

I went to Meng café with Young, Iris, and Kenneth. The cashier is very smart and familiar with all the processes of cashing. At first, I tried to order a Tira Misu cake. However, they are running out of it. She responded to me about this information very clearly and suggest me to change another one. Also, one staff standing beside the door is very extravert that he greets everyone in a passionate loud voice. I think he knows that Young is foreigner so that he also speaks very basic English to us. We also noticed that one female staff is very quiet and seldom speaks even though we are asking her to clean the floor. She did it but she avoided any verbal communication. I also tried to ask for the wifi password even though I see it is written on the wall. They only pointed the password to me. I am not sure whether they can remember the password or not.

Overall experience and observation

During the conversation with the manager of the café, we got to know that every staff in the café has a distinctive personality. They will feel a sense of belonging while working in this café. For them, working and earning money is not the ultimate purpose. Instead, they regard their work as a social place to have a connection with the outside world. The existence of the café supports their dreams. I am happy to hear that the café is now making ends meet. I believe it will be significant if we apply some technology to maximize their ability to fulfill their interests.

Describe your partner:

       My partner is very quiet. When I first took a glimpse at him, I did not identify anything abnormal about him. He walks a little unbalanced, but that does not make him look strange. We started to ask questions and introduces ourselves to him. He seemed to have understood our words but only replies in limited voice and hand gestures. None of us understood it. Therefore, we found a pen and a piece of paper writing down our conversation. He writes comparatively slow, but the characters are clear to understand. After that, we had a long conversation with his mother. While we are chatting with his mother, I noticed that he is quietly listening and paying attention to our conversation. Later, his mother posted some questions on the paper, and he started writing the response. He even actively started writing a sentence to us while he is a little ignored by us. Therefore, I believed that he has a strong desire to join our conversation. However, the way to communicate is a big challenge for him.

       Throughout our conversation with him this time in class, we notice that he relies much on his mother about everything. When we are doing user testing of our prototype to him, he responded indirectly to his mother, and then his mother translates the sign language to us instead of trying to communicate directly to us. Most of the time, he is sitting and observing our communication with his mother as an observer. We then decide to have a conversation with him without his mother. In twenty minutes, we type in sentences on the computer and ask him to reply on paper. The conversation carries out very inefficient since it is hard for him to understand the grammar of a sentence. Therefore, we need to paraphrase a lot to confirm he understand our words. Also, he has limited capability of writing Chinese characters and link them into sentences. We spend much time guessing the meaning by applying body senses. After the conversation, we still think he has a strong inner desire to communicate and experience the outside world more. However, since his mother cares too much for him, it seems that he always wants his mother to help him overcome all the obstacles. Moreover, according to his mother, he likes to play computer games and watch online series at home when he is alone.

What are their desires/challenges/difficulties?

He has many challenges. Throughout our conversation with his mother, we noticed that he never goes out by himself but also with his mother because of the potential dangers on the road. Since he lacks a certain degree of the ability to control the left side of his body, it is very hard for him to keep the balance. Also, he expressed his desire to have a romantic relationship with his mother two years ago, but his situation is not socially accepted. Furthermore, his mother is also concerned about his safety at home since he might open the room door for strangers. However, after all, we nearly forget that our target audience should be himself instead of his mother. We were chatting with his mother all the time instead of him. We then realized the most significant difficulty for him is the inconvenient environment of his communication with others. We could hardly communicate with him until his mother came.

       When we are communicating with him, we notice that since he is used to relying on his mother so much, he is not comfortable communicating with us directly. He also has little language sense, especially for reading and writing. In our WeChat chat, his mother records and describes how he uses the computer to play games and watch TV series. However, he can hardly control the keyboard using his left hand. We categorize the desires/challenges/difficulties for him in the following points:

1. Relies too much on his mother
2. Lack of language senses to communicate with others
3. Want to build a romantic relationship
4. Computer sometimes crashes
5. Difficult to click the keyboard with the left hand while playing the game

What is your project?

       At first, we intend to build a portable writing pad attached to his body so that he can easily communicate with others by writing everything down on it while going outside. However, we abandon this idea after the first prototype and user testing since it could not engage him to communicate independently with others, as he says. Therefore, by checking his needs listed above, we think addressing no.5 will be most helpful for him. We are thinking about to build a special keyboard for him to press the key using his feet instead of his fingers. For most of the games his mother lists in the group chat, they require the use of four keys: “W,” “A,” “S,” and “D” to move the figure. Therefore, we design a four-key keyboard with four direction keys. The keyboard should be on the ground so that he can step on it. We also want the user to customize the key function to make it applicable to more situations.

Development process.

       We first think about using joystick bottom. However, he may easily break it by stepping on the bottom too often. We then search online and find a pedal that connects to the computer as a key. We then come up with the idea to apply four pedals and build a four-key keyboard.

We first write in the key information for every pedal and label them accordingly. Now, these four pedals can work together as a special four-key keyboard. Since for some games, he may need to press two bottoms together, the problem is how to position them best? We open some online games and use only the right hand and right foot to try playing them. We adjust the position of the four pedals according to our experience interacting with it to find the possible best layout. Please refer to Yanru’s blog for the videos of this processing. Finally, we think the photo below shows the best layout. We also need to build a higher platform in the middle to place the feet if no pressing needed.

Due to the late delivery and time conflict, we have not had the chance to go to his home and test with him directly. We will arrange our time later to collect feedback from him and install it on his computer at home.

Reflection on the field trip

The special school behind Meng Cafe

This school is another special school and it is a little bit different from the last one we visited. The first thing is the playground. When we entered the campus, the first thing came into my eyes is a small playground. There are many playing devices on the playground, and it is outdoor. We observe two clubs’ events in the academic building: ukulele decorating and paper rolling decorating. We observed a ukulele decorating event firstly. There were around 8 students in this class. The faculty told us that they invite people from outside to provide these courses to students, and this course is an elective course. Students will choose elective courses according to their interests. I mainly observed one girl and one boy. The boy is emotional. He really wanted to attract our attention and showed his work to us. Every time he failed in connecting strings to ukulele, he became angry and shouted out loud, then he looked to us. I think he really wanted to show himself to us. Another girl was shy. I noticed that when we went into the classroom, she headed down and had a few conversations with students and teachers. I tried to talk with her but she conveyed her dislike towards me to me. So I just left but I still kept an eye on her. There is a girl from our group who got the girl’s love. They had a good conversation and that girl smiled a lot. So I think for these children with intellectual disabilities, they are in a different situation and they have different personalities. But they still want to have a connection with us.

The second class is also an elective course. Many students sat around a big desk. They were rolling colorful paper to decorate a painting tougher with teachers. Those kids enjoyed a lot. I can tell that some of the students are very open-minded and energetic, they won’t sit quietly and doing things in their spare time. But rolling paper seems to have a great attraction. Young told us that those kids can release themselves by doing repetitive works. That inspires me a lot. Maybe we can use some technologies to help them calm down and keep track of their attentions. For example, we can use some meditation-relevant things to help them keep moods. Besides, I also realize that those kids have great talents in art. I saw many artworks in that classroom and they are all made by kids of the school. Maybe we can design something for their interests. Also, when I left I saw one child going downstairs, he took a long time and his body suffered. I think a physical computing device will be a big help for them.

Overall, I think those kids are really happy. Their worlds are simple. They welcome us and embraced us. It makes me feel warm-headed.

Meng cafe:

There are 7 employees in Meng Cafe. The cashier looks like a normal person. She could use a computer really good and she is good at communicating. But she suffers from cerebral palsy and she cannot move quite well. We order a cafe and nothing special about our interaction with her. My second interaction with one of the employees is that I ask one girl to clean the water on the ground.I noticed that that employee hadn’t talked to me even though I said “pleas” and “thanks” to her. She just did what I told her and we have no interaction in oral. I think some of them might have trouble communicating with customers. Generally, I think those kids are very cute. They have their thoughts and they are very talented in their own area.

 

1. The campus behind Meng Cafe

         We observed two club activities and one individual training in this field trip. The first club activity is making a ukulele. The special school invited teachers to their school to hold these workshops. In this class, the teachers were teaching the students how to decorate the ukulele and install the strings to the ukulele. I found out that some students are very willing to talk to us, while some just keep doing the work and keep silence. One little boy from grade nine was trying to catch our attention and talked loudly. I also noticed that a little girl shew hand heart to as when we entered their classroom. I can feel that she is willing to talk to us but she is too shy. I walked close to her when she kept looking at me, and after that, she whispered at my ear that “Can we make friends? I like you so much and you are pretty”. I felt so happy and excited not only because she likes me but also because she took the initiative to talk to me. I learned from Zhang Laoshi that this girl was afraid of talking to others and having eye contact with people before. After the training at the special school, she got better but still didn’t talk to others much. It’s rare for her to talk to someone that she met for the first time. I felt that during this class, besides helping our partner by making a project for him or her, communicating more and making friends with him or her is also an important way to help them. 

         After that, we went to observe another club activity, which is paper artwork. This activity is held by some volunteers. In this class, the students will keep curving the long scrips of different colors and used them to make artwork. The volunteers said that by doing this kind of repetitive work, these kids can calm down and control their emotions better. In this classroom, we saw lots of artworks made by the kids in this special school and the high quality of these artworks really surprised us. 

 

b. Meng cafe

         We pretended to be normal customers when we entered the cafe to observe the employees. There is an employee who is very sensitive to numbers standing at the gate to greet the customers and count the visitors. When greeting us, he naturally guided us to the order desk, which is really professional. When ordering, the cashier was also familiar with everything and asked us if we wanted iced or hot Latte. During the communication, we didn’t feel that she is disabled at all. The employees who make coffee also surprised me since they did the Latte art very well and also tasted good. Some employees are not as professional as others. For example, when I asked one girl to give us some tissue, she just pointed to the front desk and told me I can get tissue there.

         We got more information from the communication with Manager Yu and one employee’s mother. We learned that this is the first cafe with disable employees in Shanghai and just opened five months ago, which is still not a mature system. Young told us that there are more than twenty cafes like this in Korea and the first one opened about 13 years ago, which means the development of the workplace for people with disabilities in Shanghai still has a long way to go. But admittedly, it is a promising start since Meng cafe is supported by many people and media. I felt Meng cafe is a cozy community for the employees since Manager Yu treated them like her own children. She required every employee to write a diary every day to check their psychological states. She said that these employees with autism or Down’s syndrome don’t always express their feelings to others, but they will write what they think in the diary so that she can help them to improve their mental health through this way. She also mentioned that although some workplaces also provide some operating posts to disable people, such as Starbucks, they can’t get care and concern that they need in these working places since people around them are all normal people. It would be hard for them to really blend in with other colleagues. Everything is different in Meng cafe. In Meng cafe, their colleagues are also friends with them since they all graduated from Zhonghua vocation school. The customers will also show understanding and sympathy for them since they know the employees are people with disabilities. They have Manager Yu, who treats them like her own children. Meng cafe is a warm and united community, where these special kids can not only get a job and prepare to integrate into society better but also live happily. Another information that Manager Yu told us which stroke my heart is that these kids only have friends in Meng cafe and it’s hard for them to know other people, which means they may only have several friends. Therefore, the same as what I said in the former reflection, we should not only focus on simply making a project for our partner but also communicate with them as a friend.

 

Describe my partner

Our partner is Lamb. She is easy-going and she loves drawing. She is kind (she worries about other people with disabilities and hopes to help them) and very smart.

Desires and difficulties

Our partner wants to go outside on her own but she cannot achieve this dream because of her physical disabilities. When going out, there are many difficulties she will face such as she cannot open, hold an umbrella and control the electric wheelchair with her right hand at the same time on rainy days.

Project Description & Process

Description

Our project is an umbrella holder that can be attached stably to a wheelchair. It consists of a stretchable stick and a light umbrella, which is easy to be opened with one hand. One side of the stick should be attached to the wheelchair. The connection should be strong enough so that it will not fall down during the movement. Another side of the stick should be the holder of an umbrella.

Process

This week we tried to use the material we have so far to make a prototype in function. We have a light umbrella, stretchable stick we got from Taobao, two types of guerilla pods. 

We tried to take the joints of stretchable sticks out and separate the legs of guerilla pods from their main body. Then we tried to install the joints to one side of guerilla pods’ leg so as to make the whole stretchable stick rotatable. We used a small pod for the first try. We successfully connected the joint with one side of the pod leg. But the leg is not strong enough to hold an umbrella. When we straightened up the umbrella, the leg bend, and the umbrella fell down. So the first try failed. For the second try, we used a stronger pod leg for rotating the part. However, we realized that the stronger leg was too big for the joint, we could not connect them together.  It seems that our prototype has been stuck. Also, because of the lack of communication and touch with users, we cannot measure the size of the wheelchair and test the capability of our partner, we cannot promote the progress by ourselves.