This past Fall session, guest coach and alumnus Kate Reed returned to NuVu High School, and along with coach Salma Islam, collaborated on an exciting studio titled Biomimicry & Wearable Tech.

The goal was to explore how technology can augment physical or sensory capabilities to improve daily life, health, and human performance—and the students embraced this concept immediately upon launch. In just three weeks, coaches Kate and Salma saw intense interest and incredible projects.

The idea for the Fall project came from Kate’s work at Dassault Systems, where her focus was on wearable technology and how interfaces are created. “We're surrounded by technology, even our computers are becoming more wearable” explains Kate.  “My goal for this studio was to get the students to think about how we're making the perfect wearable computer, and about human augmentation. Getting them to think about what it means to be human, or what does it mean to be augmented? How can we make technology that augments us in a good way or a bad way?”

The coaches kicked off the studio by simply talking about what makes us human, and about augmentation itself.  With fun in mind, Kate and Salma led design sprints with historical research for wearable technology precedents. Next up, three design sprints focused upon expanding conceptual and creative skills, and the physical skills of making.

“For our first design sprint,” shares Kate, “we looked at personal wearables to augment our experience—and that was purely analog, so using materials such as cardboard, no computers.” For the second design sprint, the students examined social wearables, and were encouraged to think about how wearables connect or disconnect people, and NuVu shop items such as the laser cutter were allowed for these prototypes. “Then we had our third sprint,” says Kate. “Where we looked at how we could do wearables that utilize all the data around us.”

For coach Salma, here is where she took note of both the growth in conceptual skills and rapid prototyping. She shares, “A lot of students sometimes felt a little intimidated that they only had a day to finish something, and then by the third design sprint they were like, ‘oh, we got this.’ They were ready to finish something in that amount of time and were practically past the design prompt by the end of the day— and ready to move on—which was really cool to experience.”

For some students, this was their first time working with Arduinos (an open-source electronic prototyping platform) and Grasshopper (a visual programming language and environment that runs within the Rhinoceros 3D computer-aided design app). For Salma, seeing the students excited about trying these new programs, and applying this newfound knowledge into their projects, was invigorating as a coach.

Although both coaches say that every project from this studio was a stand out, two did raise the bar. The first was led by senior Audrey Ha, who along with Zarra Burke, revolved their project around the idea of personal space—protecting it versus inviting people in. “Audrey did this incredible model of an almost smoky feeling wisp that wrapped around the body, all modeled in Grasshopper,” explains Kate.  “To have this be fully parametric, and open and close as someone came towards you—the amount of work they did was insane. I'm so proud of them.”

Another result of the studio was a project that took many iterations before landing on a final concept, something both coaches say is a vital lesson for students at NuVu. Produced by senior Azariyah Goodman, along with Bridget Kraemer. “This ear cuff would flutter around the ear in translucent petals, much like a flower opening and closing, and the concept was that it would flutter in accordance to data about wind speeds in a very specific location, such as someone's backyard,” explains Kate.

“It wasn't just the final product that was interesting,” says Salma, “ but also their process and how many different versions they were able to work through during the session.”

For such a conceptually deep studio, NuVu students rose to the challenge with Kate’s inspired studio, and coach Salma says it was a joy to collaborate with her on this Fall project. “A really big shout out to Kate for developing the concept deeply so that students had something to really grapple with and work through,” says Salma. She says witnessing students owning their personal growth, whether that was through receiving critique or collaborating with others in ways that were new to them, was a challenge she feels adults often struggle with.  “So it's really exciting to see younger people simply being open and challenging themselves to try those things too.”

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