NSF-Funded Student Design Projects
@ The Jo Brighton Skills Center
Project 1: Analysis of Process Flow
Four student design projects were initiated at the Jo Brighton Skills Center in Wyandotte, Michigan. The Jo Brighton Skills Center is a vocational training center for special education students aged 16-26. The Center’s mission is to provide opportunities for people with disabilities to attain their preferred life outcomes. To do this, the center provides vocational and avocational training in a variety of job clusters in the center and in the community.
Two of the vocational training classrooms at Jo Brighton involve a commercial bakery and commercial food preparation services. In order to provide a more effective learning environment for the Jo Brighton students, Jo Brighton staff and engineering students at Wayne State University initiated four student design projects intended to facilitate an organized, error-proof environment in these classrooms. Expertise from industrial, mechanical, and electrical/computer engineering fields were used in the execution of these projects, which include (1) an analysis of commercial food preparation process flow, (2) a commercial food preparation kit, (3) a computerized receipt creation system, and (4) a computerized weighing and measuring system called “Bakery 98.”
The combination of the four student design projects have had significant impact on the day-to-day operations at Jo Brighton. First, the redesign of the food preparation classroom based on the process flow analysis allows students to complete more tasks independently than before. Because the classroom is organized using a visual structuring system, the students can setup, operate, and restock their workstations without having to read signs or rely upon supervisory input. The students are more empowered now, and staff have more time to teach other skills or help students who need additional instruction.
The commercial food preparation kit project grew from the process flow analysis conducted in project 1. The kit, which keeps all of the tools necessary for each job in one contained unit, eliminated a great deal of the confusion and traffic involved with looking for and retrieving the tools for each task. Students could easily locate their kit, and, with a quick visual scan, be certain that they had all of the tools needed to begin working. With this accommodation, the students were able to get to work more quickly and have more time for learning new skills.
The third project, a computerized receipt creation program, enables students with limited reading skills to take and receive food orders. It uses alternative keyboard entry hardware, picture icons, and voice prompts to allow the student taking the order to communicate effectively with the students receiving the orders in the kitchen. This tool created a job for workers who cannot write or hold a writing implement, as the previous method of logging customer orders involved circling an iconographic representation of the customer’s order on a paper receipt.
The last project, Bakery 98, allows students in Jo Brighton’s commercial bakery classroom to accurately weigh and measure bakery ingredients without supervisory input. The scale gives students verbal and visual cues and prompts that guide them through the weighing process as well as positive feedback prompts to indicate when a goal has been met. Bakery 98 allows students with severe cognitive disabilities to actively participate in a portion of the baking process that they could not be a part of before, and, due to the increased number of competent participants, the amount of products produced in the bakery has increased.
The combination of these four projects have provided for a highly accessible, error-free learning environment in which nearly all students have the capacity to participate.
Project 1: Analysis of Commercial Food Preparation Process Flow
Designers: Dan Kempisty, Muhammad
Khan, and Rachel Seguin
Client Coordinator: Susan Hardin,
OTR
Jo Brighton Skills Center
Supervising Professors: Dr. Robert
Erlandson and Dr. Leslie Monplaisir
The commercial food preparation classroom at Jo Brighton functions to teach students with various types of disabilities skills that will allow them to be productive in community work settings. The problem with the center’s food preparation process, however, is that the students rely a great deal on staff to complete each task. Industrial engineering students from Wayne State University analyzed the process flow of the food preparation classroom and made recommendations as to how to re-engineer the environment to increase student independence.
The analysis of the food preparation site was conducted using process analysis tools. These tools include process flow sheets and cause/effect fishbone diagrams. The process flow diagrams illustrated the sequence in which the processes were performed in the classroom and if the process involved an operation, inspection, transport, storage, or delay. An efficient process consists of mostly operations and very little transportation, delay, and/or inspection. The fishbone diagrams broke down each step in the process to show the cause and effect of each major component.
Using these process analysis tools, it was found that the root causes of the students’ constant need for staff assistance were (1) the poor layout of the classroom and (2) the poor organization of stored materials. Students were easily frustrated and confused by the inconsistent nature of the environment, which led to the need for staff assistance. To remedy this problem, the workplace was reorganized using visual structuring. Visual structuring involves using icons, color coding, and other visual means of organizing the workplace. Icons were placed on drawers to indicate which tools were inside, recipes and the corresponding ingredients and instructions were color coded and identified with picture icons, and the shelves and other storage areas were labeled as to which tools or equipment belonged in which spot. This type of organization, which was emulated in the commercial bakery classroom, established a sense of consistency in the classroom. Because everything was always kept in the same place, there was less need for students to wander around, looking for tools. Because the classroom was structured visually, students did not have to know how to read in order to know what materials to gather—they only had to identify colors and pictures. By reducing the cognitive demands of the tasks, the tasks have become accessible to a greater population of students than before.
Project 2: Commercial food preparation kit
Designers: Dan Kempisty, Muhammad
Khan, and Rachel Seguin
Client Coordinator: Susan Hardin,
OTR
Supervising Professors: Dr. Robert
Erlandson and Dr. Leslie Monplaisir
While the visual structuring of the commercial food preparation and bakery classrooms increased the accessibility of the classroom tasks, it was decided that a more efficient means for gathering supplies and stored materials in the commercial kitchen was necessary. Students were still spending a great deal of time and effort walking though the kitchen retrieving the tools for each task, particularly in the commercial kitchen.
To reduce the amount of time required to gather materials and supplies, a kit of tools was fabricated for each workstation in the kitchen. Consistent with the organization pattern of the kitchen and bakery, the kits were designed using a visual structuring system that demarcated and labeled where each item should be stored. Icons and shadow diagrams were used to define the placement of the tools in each kit so that, after the workers used the tools, they would be able to easily recognize where to replace the tools in the kit. Having a specific place for each tool was found to reduce the potential for clutter and misplaced equipment.
The kits were made out of commercial dish racks (see figures 1 and 2) so that, after the tools in the kit were used, the entire kit could be placed in a dishwasher for cleaning without having to disassemble the kit.
Figures 1 and 2: A 20" x 20" dishwashing
rack and a photo of the kitting process
The cost of the kit, minus the kitchen utensils that the Center already had, was approximately $40.
Project 3: Computerized receipt creation system
Designer: Clay Sheckles
Client Coordinator: Susan Hardin,
OTR
Supervising Professor: Dr. Robert
Erlandson
With the food preparation areas organized, a means of facilitating a smooth, error-free system for taking customer orders had to be created. Before the computerized intervention, the order-taking system at Jo Brighton involved written menus and icon-coded receipts. The workers would circle the icon on the receipt that represented the customer’s choice and send the receipt back to the kitchen area.
The receipt creation system was designed to replace the paper receipts previously used and provide a medium through which more students could participate in the kitchen’s activities. The system replaces the paper receipts by using a custom-designed Visual Basic 5.0 application to print receipts to a standard color printer.
Order information is sent to the computer through an Intellikeys touchpad, which has a custom overlay containing icons of all the kitchen’s menu items as well as several simple function keys, such as “start over” (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Intellikeys Touchpad with custom overlay
To place an order, the worker simply needs to press the icon representing the customer’s menu choice and the customer’s desired condiments. For example, if a customer orders a hamburger with lettuce and mustard, the worker would press the hamburger icon, then press the “plus” sign followed by the lettuce icon, then press the “plus” icon again, followed by the mustard icon. As the worker enters this order information, the information is displayed on the computer’s monitor, providing a visual confirmation of what the worker has entered. Additionally, the program has a voice feedback mechanism that prompts the worker for order information as well as audibly confirms each order item as it is entered. When the order is complete, the worker presses the “done” icon, and the order is printed to the color printer in the kitchen.
The Receipt Creation System has a number of sophisticated features designed to promote an organized, accessible workplace as well as assist with record-keeping chores. First, when the worker entering customer orders presses “Done,” the system sorts all of the orders by color. The Jo Brighton kitchen area has different colors associated with each food preparation process; for example, the deli items are red, and the grill items are blue. Sorting the orders by color allows the kitchen staff to easily identify which orders go to which workstation.
In addition to facilitating an organized work atmosphere, the system saves statistics each day on the orders taken. When the Receipt Creation System is started each day, it prompts the user to enter the current date. As each order is taken throughout the day, statistics on which orders were taken are logged in a database. Before shutting down the system at the end of the day, the program compiles a final tally of the items ordered that day and saves those statistics in the system database. Such data are useful inventory tools and aid staff in determining what supplies need to be ordered.
To run optimally, the Receipt Creation System requires at least a Pentium-grade CPU with Windows 95, 98, or NT, a color monitor, a color printer, an Intellikeys touchpad input device, and computer speakers. This configuration included the purchase of a new computer and Intellikeys device.
Project 4: Computerized Weighing and Counting System (“Bakery 98”)
Besides the commercial food preparation classroom, the Jo Brighton Center provides student training in an on-site commercial bakery. In the bakery, the students participate in the preparation and sale of assorted baked goods. Many of the students, however, have difficulty interpreting the dials on the mechanical scales used to measure and weigh ingredients. Staff have attempted to reduce the cognitive demands of the task by color-coding markers on the dials, but the task is still highly error-prone. This leaves the students frustrated and dependent on staff intervention in order to complete the measuring and weighing processes. The original assistive technology intervention was introduced in 1996 and involved a digital scale interfaced to a PC. The associated software allowed staff to input the ingredients and amounts of ingredients necessary for each recipe using a touch screen, and it guided students through the weighing and measuring processes with verbal and visual prompts. While this initial effort was a successful proof of concept, it was inherently unreliable. The project modification features a simpler user interface, increased reliability, a rewritten recipe editor, and a smaller overall program size.
The Bakery 98 modification is divided into two separate applications: a recipe editor and a talking scale. As shown in Figure 4, the recipe editor allows staff to add or remove recipes, edit ingredients for the recipes, adjust the weight tolerances for each ingredient, and specify the amount of each ingredient to be used in each recipe. Each recipe and each ingredient has its own icon and audio file, which can also be changed in the recipe editor. The recipe editor can store up to twelve recipes and twelve ingredients with their associated icons and wave files at one time.
Figure 4: Bakery 98 Recipe editor
The talking scale component of Bakery 98 allows the user to work with the recipes stored in the recipe editor. The user first selects the recipes with which the students are to work, then selects the ingredients that the students are to measure. For example, if a teacher decides that the students need to measure enough flour to make two batches of chocolate chip cookies, s/he would press the chocolate chip cookie icon on the screen twice. From the next menu, s/he would select the “flour” icon from the list of ingredients. Each time that a recipe or an ingredient is selected, the audio file associated with the selection is played.
After selecting the recipe and the ingredients to be measured, the user places an empty bowl on the digital scale that is interfaced to the PC. The scale itself has a “tare” function to account for the weight of the bowl. When the weighing process begins, a bar graph along with a numeric display shows the current weight of the ingredient being measured in pounds and ounces (Figure 5). Voice prompts instruct the user to either “add some more” or “take some out” until the target weight is reached, and, when the scale detects that the target weight has been reached, a voice prompt announces that the session is over. Staff must select the “continue” button in order for the student to begin weighing the next selected ingredient.
Figure 5: visual display of the weighing process
The user interface of Bakery 98 is designed to work with an Edmark Touch Window for user input as well as with standard keyboard shortcuts. The timed prompting mechanism during the weighing process can be adjusted to activate any time between 1 and 99 seconds, and the program startup screens are password protected for security purposes.
The system runs on Microsoft Windows 95 and interfaces to a Pelouze 4000 Series Scale. To run optimally, the system requires a Pentium-grade CPU, 32MB RAM, and 5MB hard disk space. The hardware for the system modification cost approximately $300.