Sp 4. HuskyADAPT: on toy adaptation, universal design, and importance of student-led organizations

[Music] Hi everybody, here's a progress as back. A perfect place to learn about research and rehab engineering and assistive tech. I'm your host, Sasha, a lab engineer at the University of Washington. And this is special episode number four. [Music] Today we're going to be talking about Husky Adapt, a student organization at the University of Washington that is dedicated to supporting accessible design and inclusive play technology. And we have three guest speakers, which is the first one on Gears of Progress. The first one is Molly Malika. She's the founding member of Husky Adapt. She took it all through six years as a club and she's now an assistant professor at the University of Maryland. We have Dr. Alyssa Swammer, who is a former student chair of Husky Adapt and currently is a courted director of rehab research program at Gillette Children's. And we have Mia Hoffman, who is currently the student executive chair and a PhD student at the Steel Lab at the University of Washington. So welcome in. Thanks for doing this. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having us. I think a first question. I'm going to address it directly to Molly, since Molly was at the beginning of it all. Can you walk us down your memory lane of how did the idea come about and how did you make Husky Adapt happen? Yeah. So I think that the very beginning of it is that I was a master student at Ohio State and there there is a toy adaptation program that I was involved with launching where we adapted toys for users with disabilities in classroom and there's an extracurricular activity. And I presented that work at a conference, the American, the ASC, American Society of Engineering Education. And there I met Diane Hendrix, who heard that I was about to start my PhD at the University of Washington and she was a lecturer at the University of Washington. And she said, "We've got to do this at the University of Washington." And so once, and then before I even got to Seattle, when I was coming out to interview for the PhD program, I had gotten emails from somebody in Seattle saying, "Hey, we don't have access to adapted toys." I know that you're in Ohio, but can you ship us some? And I said, "I'm actually going to be in Seattle, so I'll just bring them to you myself." And so the need was so clear from a community perspective and then the support was there from a faculty perspective. And so then we just started to find other like-minded folks, like Castile, for example, and several other faculty members. And that's kind of how we launched the whole thing. And then it shifted into a student organization with a ton more students involved in contributing leadership and just grew from there. - I see. And what was the process of? So you started as just a simple toy adaptation club, I would say red, and then it grew into an organization that doesn't only focus on toy adaptation, it has design teams, and it also encompasses the Go Baby Go project under it. So how did it grow to be such a big organization? - Yeah. I think it was just those like-minded folks that we pulled in, and I could name a whole bunch of names here, but who said, you know, yeah, we're making toys more accessible, but we're not, you know, there's so many other things that aren't accessible. And toy adaptation is kind of this one-time thing, so it's not really teaching the principles of universal design and of designing something from the beginning with accessibility in mind. So what if we had some other opportunities to get involved? And toy adaptation was almost the on ramp too, learning about accessible play and accessibility in general. And then Go Baby Go, there's a couple of University of Washington, faculty and staff members who were relieving Go Baby Go Seattle and they got on board, and we're super, you know, just amazing folks and super supportive. So then we started supporting that organization and then. So it just, it all was about bringing people, passionate people who are very talented together and saying, "Hey, how can we grow this and really make it what we want it to be?" How long was the journey from that kind of first email of, "Hey, can you ship us some adapted toys to what it is now?" Well, so the adapted toy email would have been like early 2014, like maybe March or April of February, something like that of 2014 or of, sorry, sorry, of 2016 rather, of 2016, so early 2016, I think we launched our first design team somewhere around 2018 or so or maybe 2019. So several years to design teams, but it's just continued to grow. The Go Baby Go added, you know, around there. So, and I think it's getting bigger and better every year. That's awesome. You mentioned this idea of the universal design being kind of like the overarching theme of everything that a Husky adapt does and the reason it does, what it does. Can you speak briefly about what universal design is and its importance, especially in engineering programs? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that some of the folks here, Alyssa and Mia, who do more their research on that will be able to add to my definition here in contribute. But I think that universal design is thinking about how to design something from the beginning that works for as many users as possible. So it's proactive rather than reactive. It's done in accommodation. It's a, how can we design this from the beginning to be able to work for so many people? And so I think that that involves, there's these principles of universal design that tend to help with those sorts of things, like being simple and intuitive is one of the principles. But I think that the really big thing is thinking about when you're designing something, who will this be accessible to and who will it not? And are there ways that we can make the product so that it's just accessible to everyone? And I think what we found when we look back at product design is that oftentimes products that are designed to be accessible are actually just better products in general. And there's so many examples of that of like the modern potato peeler, I believe was originally designed for people with arthritis to use. And it's just worked so much better than the potato peeler that was the previous generation. And so I think that it helps, you know, it helps when we're teaching students this from the beginning, it helps train the next generation of engineers to be more inclusivity minded and to think more about who's going to actually use their product. Some of them might be people who have abilities exactly like them, or quite similar, but then lots of people of course have all sorts of a huge range. And so I think it's thinking about that huge range of abilities when you're designing the product. And I think something that is kind of a key component of that, and that's integrated kind of into the heart of the Husky Adapt Design program, is to actually design with those that will kind of benefit from the devices that are can speak to their lived experience. And we see this growing more and more kind of in the engineering education, as well as in the research sphere of like, hey, speaking with needs experts, as we call them in the Husky Adapt world, having them involved from day one to really define the problem, discuss kind of each iteration of the design and the solution is really, really critical to land at that end product that is really intentionally designed and will be kind of useful kind of across the board, or all of the things that Molly mentioned. And all of those projects are community source, like that's where we start, is out of community and the goal is to return it to the community. That's great. I think the next one I'm going to address to Alyssa, and it's this idea of the adding the design teams to Husky Adapt. What was the main purpose of design teams? What do they do? And what are they teaching its members? Yeah, so I would say our design program has probably morphed the most out of any kind of component of Husky Adapt. So I'd love to see where Mia's at and design teams in current day. Kind of at the beginning of the program in Molly, you can contribute to this as well. Design teams were really envisioned to add this additional element to engineering curriculum of like really expand on this idea of universal design. How do we design these products that will be kind of useful across the board? And it really, I mean, foundationally started with this idea of let's pull these ideas from community members that have this this lived experience and task teams of engineering students to help tackle those problems in parallel and in partnership with these needs experts. And so I think that kind of recognizing that that that could build kind of skills beyond what toy adaptation was like Molly, Molly spoke to it's like integrating kind of that that. engineering element, that engineering design element into the program was a big critical component. And really that partnership and in how we source those projects has stayed more or less the same. I guess mechanistically teams are paired up with these needs experts in the fall. We kind of solicit projects through the summer. Teams are paired up with them in the fall and then work throughout the course of the year on designing a prototype. And typically that results in some physical functioning prototype at the end of the year that's highlighted at a showcase. And in some cases teams kind of continue to spin that off and work on these projects after that kind of initial year of development. But the intent is to design something that is usable and workable and try and get it open-sourced or available as much as possible and is appropriate. So yeah, that's where me. I don't know if you have anything to add. These two are right. The design program is the most iterative thing as design is very iterative. So I was wondering how it can make the program better. So it originally started as a class long go. And then it became completely extracurricular. So it's kind of our design programs unique in that it's there's workshops that are run bi-weekly by current undergraduate students to teach really fundamental design skills that students are going to need to really complete that project, whether that be really like needs funding skills, CAD, basic soldering skills, and all of our projects are very unique in the skills that's happening. But there's some similarities in teaching that design process because in an engineering curriculum, a captured project by then by the time I see you're a senior, you've learned a lot of this fundamental skills. But the Husky Adapt program is really interesting that we actually have all years. So there's first year, second year, third year, and fourth year and master students involved in those design teams, which really makes it like a really collaborative environment, but be like we've also helped teaching those skills. So that's something where you are always thinking about is the best way to support that. But I think I'm excited to see the next iteration of the design teams were always trying to figure out the best way to kind of cater to not just physical prototypes, right? We get a lot of mechanical engineers in the program, but we also want to make it inclusive, you know, how do we get in like information scientists and different people? So creating different projects is always a thought because accessibility isn't always just physical accessibility, right? A big problem in the past 10 to 15 years has been digital accessibility. So it's been having projects work on that. You see, and how was the current process for getting a proposal for a design team to work on? It's actually pretty simple. So we have a lot of community groups that will have a very, very fun Microsoft form that way people fill out to kind of say like, hey, I have a project idea and that's kind of where it starts is we sit, we kind of email it to the community, a lot of the community knows us. We have a really big outreach program that's kind of like the fundamental of like making sure people in the community just know how to get apt exists and that were a resource that they can need to us, whether they need to get switch adapted technologies to design projects and things like that. So not a complicated process. And projects will, I mean, to kind of there are certain types of projects that better fit into the mold of Husky Adapt. And so a huge part of the process of the leadership team is to really vet those projects and the work with community partners in some ways to like make sure that they're shaped so that they are well defined, well structured so that a team can really make some measurable progress over the course of the year. I think that that's something that we've we're still, or we were at least when I left still kind of fine tuning of how to appropriately vet projects, but it's something we're always kind of working on as well. I think sometimes it's hit or miss right sometimes our needs experts disappear two weeks into the project and it's like, oh okay, we have a team, yeah so sometimes there's that kind of scramble that happens with just a lot of volunteer work. So continuity is always a challenge. Sometimes a project that seems very well-scoped from the leadership side might not be from the team that's really short and the tackle it side. I see. What are some of the current design projects that the teams are working on? So I think some of the past years, some of my things in the highlight to bend one team this year was working on, to think about this, one team was working on a mouth style as holder. So for those of you who don't know for individuals with upper level of motor involvement to access their phones, they might use something called a mouth style as which imagine it look it's kind of what it sounds like a very long style as that you use this connected basically to like a mouth guard. But like positioning it and putting it down something there's not really anything on the market for that. So when the teams was working on developing you know just a three-printable way to do that. Last year one of my favorite projects was we did team that was working with Seattle depth of sports with their wheelchair basketball team on a way to transport their sports chair while they were regular day chair or vice versa. So they went through lots of iterations of towing mechanisms and things and upon a really quite simple design that's just like a three-printable frame that can be attached to any chair. That's pretty cool. You mentioned that some of the projects just kind of continue their existence beyond the year of being in the Haskead app design team. What does it look like? Like what do they tend to grow into who takes care of them once they're out of the Haskead app design team? So you have any examples? I can think of a couple. So we've had a couple projects that have run year to year. For example we're working on an affordable like wireless switch. So for those of you who don't know like first switch accessible toys or a lot of other switch accessible technologies. Usually it's like a large button with a cable with a mono audio jack cable that you plug in. And a lot of people are like can we make with wireless? There are wireless switches that cost like $180. So we've had a team that worked almost two to three years. I'm really trying to make like a low tech easy to wait easy to like three-printed assemble. Honestly after two to three years they still were having challenges. And that's just a project that we said hey like this might be too complicated for this space right now. But I've seen similar things appearing on makers making change which is a larger open source as a technology group. Yeah that was my other question of what happens to designs after you know the design team kind of I don't know do they disband for the year at the end of the year. Are they sort of done like for example with the 3D printed basketball wheelchair structure for transportation like do you guys make it available through other resources what is kind of the process. This is definitely something we're still working on is like the best way to transition. So at the end of the year we always if a project seems safe and reliable enough we will give it to the needs expert some of our projects maybe aren't at that stage and that you know we bet them before we put them out there because these are things like that or not FDA regulated or a community you know consumer products. So we always make sure that's nice and safe before we give it out to somebody but if it hits that space really the goal is to we always make sure we have like digital copies of things so sometimes people email us and ask for those resources because they're really like hey I was google and you know I found this project I think really our end goal is to be able to get things on to things like thingiverse or makers making change or similar platforms but really working on that translation and we're hoping this year partner with Wattap the Washington assistive technology access program is that acronym to like really help with that transition and making sure it's like continued updated. Yeah I think that's always the expectation and I just was pulling up the Husky Adapt website to see kind of what has been posted there I know at one time we were posting like files and project stuff just available on our our website I don't know if those still live there but for folks that are interested in seeing some of our our previous work those posters from from previous teams and design concepts in general are are listed there as well so cool let's know I'll leave a link in the description so how's Husky Adapt is now at a point where you have a variety of sponsors and support from different, especially the centers at the University of Washington and then some more of the external organizations. What was the process, and I guess I'll ask Molly, what was the process of starting up to get financial support? I know at some point you got the Husky seed fund for Husky Adapt, but what was kind of like the ramping up and how do you even attract external organizations to support something like a university run organization? Yeah, the beginning started off with small proposals, so things that were $2,500 or so and getting until we had a group of people involved. I think that actually the very, when I first told the story of it, one I think key aspect I was missing was that I got a team of bioengineering honors students. They do kind of like a, or used to do an honors team service project. So I had some students who I taught to adaptation to. They were the first people to I think learn it at the University of Washington, and then because there were four of them, then there were five of us and we could start to run our first events. So we got a small grant just to get enough tools and a few toys for our first event. And I think we adapted something like five toys at our first event or so. And now of course the events are much bigger because many more students know the process and then you can have more teams with one expert and so on and so forth. But we started off with small grants or grant proposals. I think our first big one was the Husky Sea Fund and that that was much larger than the other awards we had gotten and that really ramped up our the number of tools that we could have and the number of people that we could teach the number of events we could run. The students have always been at least as long as I was involved volunteers. So we're not paying any students. They're all volunteering their time. But still the toys cost money, the tools cost money, the adaptation part isn't that expensive but we still have to buy the tools to do it and to get the toys in the first place. And then when we donate the toys we don't charge anything. We don't even charge the original cost of the toy. We just fully donate them. I think even with batteries we had typically even included the batteries because you can't give somebody a toy and then not have batteries in there. That's no fun. So it was a lot of writing proposals and then reworking those proposals to collect data on what we were doing and then say, hey, now we have taught this many students. We've done this much. We really show the positive impact and I think that that helped us leverage and get that funding. I think that in that first year, that 2016 to 2017 year we did have one impromptu design team. It was before the real things they designed an adapted Xbox controller because we had a family contact us and say, hey, our son, Xbox controller doesn't work for him but he really wants to play Xbox with the siblings. He told us what he would need. He needs a button further apart. He needs them to be bigger and that team, that very first team of bioengineering students that was led by a student named Alexander Novakodro. I think that's how he plants his last name and they adapted and then something like the next year Microsoft came out with the adaptive Xbox controller but I think that we had our posted online first. So I know that they didn't use it and they were way ahead. They had been designing for a while but we did adapt an Xbox controller and post it, I believe, before Microsoft did that. And something else in the early days that was helpful in both increasing awareness in Seattle and in Washington at large was we started doing some of these externally supported toy adaptation events and one of our big partners in early days was Microsoft actually is that some we got connected to some of the engineers that said, hey, I want to organize a service event with my team. Like, I found your group and I'm interested and that really launched kind of a multi-year partnership that we still do things with the folks at Microsoft. But those kind of toy adaptation events were a great way to like go out into the community, bring some of our student volunteers that were really experts in toy adaptation and lead some of these individuals through that process. And in doing so we were able to set up kind of through these service mechanisms like, oh, yeah, Microsoft has a big program to donate funds to these nonprofits and organizations. So we're able to get some funding there. We ran those events and continue to with Microsoft, Google, some like school districts have run things with high school students, some PT and OT's organizations. We have a lot of interest as well and that's something else I guess to plug is folks in the area. And me, you can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe those that are interested in running these kinds of events or hosting these types of events can submit another exciting Microsoft form. And we have team members that will actually set up those events. So that was another clever way that like, oh, they'd fund the toys and supplies and then we teach and then we're able to kind of build up our stock pile of toys that we could then donate out. And these those types of events are such a win, win, win. I'm not sure how many wins, but it's the students get to teach that well, we get to donate toys to the community. The Microsoft employees get to learn how to do or whoever we're working with get to learn how to do the toy adaptation process and seem to really enjoy it and even have ideas of how to make it better in the future because they come with so much technical knowledge, of course. And the students get to teach people who are practicing professionals, they get to be the teacher and say, hey, I know, I know how to adapt this to it here. Let me walk you through the process, right? And they get to make connections there in network. And so there's just it's such a great, I think, learning experience, but then also community impact that we can have from those types of events. We've been even trying to like push them. We did one with the King County Library Systems this year, which I think is coming me by annual thing, hopefully. Now, of like not making it just for like corporates or like a certain school, sometimes schools have those extra resources to have those things, sometimes challenging. So really, we can have at library. It always seems a lot of like families coming in for participating, which is really exciting. Or you know, OTs or PT's who just maybe their climate doesn't have the resources to have, you know, an entire toy adaptation. So, and the cool thing about that then is the hope that those library toys can go back into the community via the library eventually. And kind of starting to take Husky Adap, not as the middleman on every toy adaptation in the Seattle area. Let's go. I was going to ask you, and you mentioned leaving the toys at the library, the ones that you adapt through this event at the library. What do you usually do with adaptive toys? Where do you donate them? So usually we kind of have like a full, there's a full cycle, right? So we don't, right when we buy new toys, we adapt them at either an on campus event or an off campus event. And then it goes to our toy donation chairs where people in the community will request toys via another wonderful Microsoft form. So to really check out our website for all of our Microsoft forms, but that's really where people can go and be like, oh, I want either specific toys or, you know, I just need like I want like five toys for my school or my clinic or, you know, my child means I want like three toys for them. And then we have pick up, they can either come to campus or pick them up or roll me up them out. And that partnership with the library and other organizations is great because we also recognize that many of these families, I mean, it's hard to come, even if the need is there, it's truly hard to come to campus. I mean, some of these individuals are like we donate largely to the Seattle area, but they recognize that there are needs even outside of the state of Washington, obviously that folks have found us through Google searching or whatever word of mouth and connected us, or contacted us for adapted toys. So we've shipped toys all over the country. We try and get them connected with somebody that's more local that we're aware of, but yeah, we've shipped toys out. And so I think finding ways that we can better integrate ourselves into the communities to make those donations more accessible is also like a big challenge and something that we're continuously working on. So I'm excited this year, we're going to be partnering with, there's a local DME, Derboh medical equipment loan closet organization that we're going to be working with them to do some toy donations. I think there are users who often sometimes a clinic might know about us, but specific families don't, which is always a challenge. The need for creating Husk kid app, kind of like the original toy adaptation club stemmed clearly from this idea that most of the toys on the market are not very accessible for kids with disabilities. In the years that you have been adapting toys and Molly has probably been doing it the longest having done it as a master's student, how have you seen kind of like or have you even seen the progression in companies that do make toys this kind of increase and ramp up their efforts in trying to make more accessible toys. And if there are such companies, can we give them shout-outs? Yeah, that's a good question. I think that asking a parent of a kid or a bunch of parents of kids with disabilities would be a better person to answer that question than me. I definitely, I do think that some companies have moved into that space more. I have started to think in that way. I think that one, this isn't really your question, but one thing I've seen is that some toys have become less adaptable, the way that we adapt them because the companies have started to put things on the internet to make them not able to be opened or not, they put certain things on the inside that cover up the whole circuit board so we can't add that alternative activation switch, which I think is something just related to manufacturing and making them cheaper or making them less modular. So we have to be careful about the toys we select to make sure that they really are adaptable. I don't know very much about, I know that the need still exists for adapted toys. Families are so requested them all the time and so I'm not sure if there are some off-the-shelf now that are better than what they used to be, you know, maybe 10 years ago when I started doing this, but people have been doing it for decades and decades. So, uh, Olesa Mia, yeah. I think general awareness about like the need for adaptation has definitely grown. I think with like, I mean, it may not be the first example, but like with the Microsoft like adaptive controller, them coming out and like putting that stake in the ground and saying like we're designing this switch specifically for this reason, that started to change some of that conversation more and more. But yeah, I agree with Molly that I don't necessarily think like if I were to walk down a target aisle today that I would see many improvements or changes in how some of these like battery powered toys are being designed. That said, there are clever way, and part of that is just like a economic reason, unfortunately, it comes back to some of that that in order to make some of these switch activated toys, obviously it's a smaller user population than the general public. But so those adding those kinds of switches and adding those kinds of ports is not necessarily economical, unfortunately. But there are some really cool things that I've seen that can make toys accessible to a broader population, just in kind of these as we were talking about universal design principles like one of the recent toys that I saw was this and then I think we still adapt, but it's like a drum toy that allows a kid to be able to bang on the top and still engage with the toy and there are some buttons on the side that still require some of that fine motor skill. But there are ways to engage with that toy, even if you don't have that kind of fine motor skill required for the button. So I think that's where we can find this happy medium of thinking through some of those features that can be more broadly interacted with and interactable. I think I can speak to this a lot of a news and research into this space specifically on my research side and not my outreach and has kid handside. There's still not a lot of accessible toys out there, but there are some like a drum toy potentially or I think Hasbro just released like a light board that's like a kind of like more of a sensory toy. It's accessible in a different way, but they've been very interactive things for that, which is awesome to see, but they're still very little done for it. Something we were actually hoping from like the Go Baby Go side is for Go Baby Go for those of you who don't know, it's a nation-want, I guess global organization now that adapts toy ride on cars like that Jeep used to drive around in your backyard for kids with disabilities to drive around. It's kind of like a stop-that measure before they get their first mobility device, whether that be a powered wheelchair or manual wheelchair, or just while they're learning to walk. What we're hoping is that like maybe like the Toyota Tundra version would maybe have a Jeep, you know, have a little audio jack already built into it because those modifications are even bigger than a toy adapt because we do, you know, you take up the entire wiring system for the entire thing, but it's basically a large toy adaptation is what that does and then we add structural modifications to support the child. So I'd love to see even just like that regulations. My hope someday is that a lawyer comes in and like, sews the toy companies for not supporting like, right, I would love like some version of like the 504 Act or the ADA to really apply to consumer goods as well to make them accessible. So some were not even thinking about that. But we can look at video gaming for example has increasingly become quite more accessible with things like able gamers and things like that. And we've seen commercial products for the PlayStation, the Switch, and the Xbox all in the past like five or so years. And those are commercially available switch technologies. Microsoft has recently released the Microsoft Adaptive Keyboard and Hobbit and those are commercially available switches that honestly anyone could use. Honestly, we have one at the lab. I occasionally use it for like the Zoom U-Bun. It's useful not just for accessibility. I do hope that indirectly Husky Adapt will contribute to this long term because we're training it. I mean if someone comes to our adaptation event they at least have that seed planted of, and whether we have people come to our events who are engineers or all sorts of other majors. It's not exclusively engineering although that is who we tend to attract in the highest numbers. So we have that we planted that seed even if that's the only thing they came to one event for two hours one time. A lot of people come to multiple events. They like to get to the point where they can teach other people how to do the process and maybe go to Microsoft and teach people or whatnot. And then if they join a design team they have this term or year long process where they get to really think about designing something from the beginning. Sometimes they take a class in accessibility after that. And then our students go all over the place. So you know I'm on the East Coast now in Maryland but I start I learned this whole process in Ohio. Our students have headed everywhere. Right. Alyssa's in the Midwest. And so I hope that we are kind of training the next generation of folks to have this seed planted. And that hopefully as products as they become product engineers or whatever else and they're working in their design spaces that they have this in mind and hopefully can be that voice in the room saying you know is there a way to make this more accessible or can we think of a way that this would work for somebody with you know XYZ disability. And I hope that we see that starting to happen as time goes on. Yeah how big is Husky adapted at the moment? It's hard to get a solid number because right a lot of people come to our events once off I think last year I think we had over 400 students coming through Husky Adaptory Adaptation events. We had 36 students in the design program. You know we helped support a capstone with four students. So it's our it's hard to get the stats right we get stats that very like an event it's easier to get those but you know we people who come to community events and we don't track those when you know when we're at King County Lab or System we probably had 40 people come to that event. I think we are at well over a thousand like well over a thousand who have interacted since the beginning of Husky Adapt. Oh for sure I mean if even things running on campus stands us now like the Bioengineering curriculum uh then Molly helps set up uh they now every year do as part of like whether or labs they do a toy adaptation uh and they honestly don't even ask us for salary irons anymore because they went and got those because it's just a fundamental part of their curriculum. And I think that's something that's so like unique and clever about having Husky Adapt structured the way that it is is that we can kind of reach all these people that have very different interest levels in this space and and still like and still some of the the same kind of passions for accessible design and care for accessible design it's like we've got some individuals that yeah they hear about us at their freshman career or their freshman kind of event fair I don't know exactly what it's called but uh and that come to a single event and that's all that they get involved with Husky Adapt through their four years we've got other people that are on design teams year after year um and that are heavily involved. and then obviously it folks in the leadership positions that are even more heavily involved. And so I think like having these different levels is super helpful because it means that we can expand our reach across the university and then also out into the community. Yeah, and something we always think about is like really how do we foster that community? So people feel like they're getting involved in accessibility, not just that toy adaptations or design, right? Having lectures on campus, Sasha, you've come and given a lecture from Hescue to actually really helping to promote accessibility, partnering with Create on Events, partnering with like our disability, the D Center. Yeah, the D Center. There's only like one of two disability-focused like centers on American colleges and we're one of them. So we've partnered with them. We've started the Yellow Toy Club this year to really help kind of create that toy adaptation community. Like we have a design community so people are involved in adapting toys weekly without you know like us putting together a formal workshop. They're just coming on their own to adapt toys and instead of the space for that. I was reading kind of in in some of the years that Molly was part of Hescue adept. There was a lot of K through 12 outreach events. Do you still outreach on the level of kind of younger students outside of the Microsoft shops and if so, what are the efforts? We do a lot of that, right? Some of us toy adaptations. I think listen, I both have talked at summer camps and businesses with them. Right, we're doing toy dabs at Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts and things like that. Not elementary schools, we usually don't do toy dabs with that level but middle school high schools we don't know. Going to like STEM nights at you know like local elementary school schools. A big thing here on campus is Discovery Days which is a campus-wide like College of Engineering like a thousand two thousand students are coming to campus and interacting and learning about all sorts of different STEMs. So we represent that. There's so many ways we're involved. Yeah and I think a cool part about toy adaptation specifically is that it is something that the process in itself can be like adapted, pun intended I guess. In that we can like the very typical process is like you're soldering in new wires you're like it requires a certain level of kind of skill and find motor skill specifically but there are other ways to do that process and there are toys that are specifically like appropriate for that process. So if we want to make something a toy adaptation event approachable to like a K through 12 population we can do that. There are ways that you can adapt toys without the need for soldering and doing that as well. And so by modifying that process a little bit we're able to bring it to all these different communities. Admittedly I think something that actually came up that we hadn't necessarily thought a lot about but it came up during one of these kind of outreach events is how we can make the process more approachable to older adults. In that like we're working with a lot of circuitry that's very small that does require kind of a level of precision in some cases and so I think that there's still opportunity to continue modifying that or thinking through that process of adaptation to make it more approachable to that population as well. I know something else we've done recently is we're working on developing like a is to provide switches to go with the adapted toys and we've been working on a process where it's made out of just like very low tech materials like tape and carb and carb get plastic which is like plastic cardboard. And that's an activity that we can do with a five-year-old safely because it's hey put tape on plastic you know and like it's something that's easy to do in a shorter bit of time. So it's also thinking about how can we offer different activities where we're teaching and you know building something for the community but in a way that you know is age appropriate. That's pretty cool. It's like the adaptability of the adaptation. I know that Molly was able to turn some of the stuff that she's been involved in and Husky adapted to actual research papers. How did you do it Molly and what were your findings? Yeah so I when I first got started with this work at Ohio State it was part of the involvement was the Department of Engineering Education and so they started it well it got the Department of Engineering Education at Ohio State got involved to say hey can we measure the impact of this on students and so I got really interested in that kind of question. And so you know there's a bunch of research from the physical therapy realm and and whatnot on the impact of these toys and the importance to their development to kids with and without disabilities and then the process of adapting there wasn't very much or really any literature about hey does this impact the students who to do the adaptation and so we started measuring this in all sorts of different ways and published it in some peer review journals and at peer review conference publications and I think that our big picture finding is that this positively impacts all students and especially impacts students who are underrepresented in engineering and so when we say it positively impacts we measured things like asking the students how much they enjoyed it how much it helped them feel like an engineer or helped them feel like engineering was the right place for them how much it gave them confidence in engineering questions that are sort of related to identity and engineering and self-efficacy or their confidence in engineering and we found that especially for women engineering students that those answers were statistically significantly more positive than for men so it's great for everyone it's not that it's you know bad for one group and good for another but that that it especially helps women which falls into line with the engineering education literature that engineering that has an impact on people is particularly attractive and particularly important to folks who are underrepresented and historically excluded from engineering which includes people based on their gender or race ethnicity etc. what we would also really like to study this I said women I used that group is to say students who are underrepresented are historically excluded based on their race we that's something that I'm planning to do here at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and we struggled to do that at both Ohio State and the University of Washington because the population of students at those institutions there there frankly aren't enough students who are underrepresented due to their their race or ethnicity so my my current institution is a minority serving institution and so that's that's something that we would really like to study is what's the impact on students from from differential and ethnic backgrounds I mean another thing I would really like to study that we haven't studied yet is what's the impact on students with disabilities who do this process and that's something that has also been a little bit challenging to study so far based on the numbers but I think it's really important as well Absolutely I think just to wrap up this conversation for anyone who's outside of the greater Seattle area and just here's this podcast and wants to learn to adapt toys on their own do you are there any resources you can share me I know I was getting excited already typing things up I know there's some Instagram profiles books that are available that so maybe we can give a shout out to that so one I want to highlight is less a doubt for everyone which is a book that recently came out I think this past year by Greg and Makata he's from the Seattle area and this is a great guide to adapting both with soldering skills and without soldering skills toys fans all sorts of different things we have multiple copies of this book and the Husky Dap Space I have a couple of others so on the Husky Dap website I believe there is a document that is very basic introduction to toilet application that I think you just want to one page or can be great there's also on some to plug some other websites there's an organization a nonprofit in Cleveland Ohio called Replay for Kids and on their website they have a map of toy adapting organizations across the country which I think if you if you end up being nearby one of those organizations and getting in touch with them that can be a great way to to start to volunteer and do things there. Makers making change also has guides for multiple to in like first how to adapt specific toys available on their website as well and I think at one point we had put together a kind of in collaboration with the the Tasker Center which is another organization on the UW campus a how to series on Vimeo that goes through kind of the basic concepts of soldering, how to identify the circuit and the element of the circuit that we actually want to tap into, and then goes through a couple examples. At one point we had some like instructional, then we always get these requests of like, can we like put together instructables on toys, and unfortunately the toy market moves so quickly that like by the time we get those put out, those toys are no longer being sold, but we find that a lot of the the same basic concepts can really be like once you get down the the the basic strategy for dapting a toys, you can get a pretty good feel for any toy and approach any toy. Again kind of back to one of Molly's points, there are some toys that just like are not adaptable unfortunately or not easily adaptable without like power tools and equipment to get them open, but there are definitely some some brands that are more approachable than others have found like little Einstein's is typically pretty good. Fisher price especially the linkables from Fisher price, even though be careful if you have more than one in a room they will all go off at the same time. These are Bluetooth enabled toys that are a little frightening to adapt because they do activate what another and just another resource is switch to adaptive toys that's out of in switch choices out of like misery area I think like St. Louis area and they've also got a lot of I just checked their YouTube and it looks like they've got updated on how to adapt many toys and I know that's been a good resource for some families in area and then if you're also looking for affordable switches look to Etsy the big commercial ones range from 50 to $150 so if you're looking for some affordable ones Etsy a lot of people have been making them for one offs and also switch to adaptive toys can be found on there as well. And I would say because we haven't plugged it yet for those that are in and around the the community or just truly want to stay updated with like what Husky Adapt is doing there's a biweekly newsletter that goes out for those that are local to the area it has signups for kind of community events that we like to amplify a lot of the work that other organizations across campus are doing and then there's also opportunities that's where the link gets circulated for submitting design project ideas and everything so highly encourage even if you're just community members you can sign up for the newsletter it's free and we try not to bug you too much and you can find forms and copies of all of our own then newsletters on our website too so if you have a project idea you can go to our website right now and submit it if you need a request toys go to our website right now and submit it we keep we do have a great team that keeps that website up and running. Perfect. Those were all very nice plugins I love it. Well thanks you so much for all three of you for participating in this I am wishing Husky Adapt long prosperous years organization ways and less challenges along the road less dropouts from design chairs. Yeah. The line chase always. Yeah it really has been in incredible how many like passionate people have been involved over the years that I don't think that I adequately when I was going through the history like credited and so I don't know that you want me to take the time to list like all of them right now or anything but but I really going back to your question about if you somebody across the country says I want to learn how to adapt toys I think that all the things we listed are great and my other suggestion would be to try to find some like like minded passionate folks who want to do that kind of thing and and I think that's really how Husky Adapt got built got built excuse me and so I won't go through like the whole list of it I just want to say three more names that are for credit really critical in this process that I didn't I failed to mention before so Brandon Goodwin was was really the person that pushed Husky Adapt into becoming a student org which has been so critical and successful and then the three other founding faculty members so I don't think I I mentioned our not caspies the direct director of the Tasker Center Heather Felder and Sean Rondo who are the the go baby go folks I just couldn't sorry let us come off without me adequately saying that the really most critical people but there's such a team that I couldn't I would take the whole podcast to list and I would really like to give credit to our mostly funders these days create the Center for Research and Education on assisted technologies experiences at UWB who has kind of taken us into them now that they've grown into their own entity that existed after Husky Adapt so we kind of become the RSO of create so they provide us a lot of support both from knowledge and resources for space and faculty support us but also to financial support as well yeah and one of our other big kind of donors that was was critical to the the foundation of the program and really provided a lot of our seed funding for the design program specifically were Tom and Caroli Mayther's they they have been supporters of Husky Adapt from day one and and are really kind of a huge component of the reason why the the club grew as quickly and has been as successful as it is today so thanks to both of them thanks so much ladies this was a pleasure chatting to you this episode was powered by create the Center for Research and Education on accessible technology and experiences at the University of Washington and Resna the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America thanks for listening to this episode as you can tell here's a progress is back and there's so many exciting episodes ahead if you would like to suggest a guest speaker or to be one yourself please reach out and as usual stay tuned for the next episode