Gorge MakerSpace founder Jack Perrin, at left, poses for a group photo with Project Invent Demo Day winners Madison Swanson, Dylan Durand, Wyatt Sheaves, CC Ahrens, Cin Ahrens, and Henry Kirkwood. In the middle are Aiden Dennis and his mother, Jessica.
Gorge MakerSpace founder Jack Perrin, at left, poses for a group photo with Project Invent Demo Day winners Madison Swanson, Dylan Durand, Wyatt Sheaves, CC Ahrens, Cin Ahrens, and Henry Kirkwood. In the middle are Aiden Dennis and his mother, Jessica.
A group of six Columbia High School students invented a device, through extracurricular work with local afterschool program Gorge MakerSpace, that helps a third-grade student with a speech disorder communicate in the classroom. The invention scored the group first place May 16 at Project Invent’s Demo Day, an annual convention where student groups across the country pitch original invention ideas to industry leaders and compete for funding to further invest in their creation.
The group, composed of juniors Dylan Durand, Madison Swanson, CC Ahrens, Cin Ahrens, Wyatt Sheaves, and sophomore Henry Kirkwood, won the grand prize of $1,000 for further development of their invention. The students introduced their device in a five-minute presentation to panelists and answered questions about their design process.
“I am super beaming with pride,” Gorge MakerSpace founder Jack Perrin said of the students. “There are lots of really natural-born leaders in this group.”
The students have been working since last fall under the mentorship of Perrin to create something tangible that would solve a need for someone in the community. Enter Aiden Dennis.
Aiden has a speech disorder called Childhood Aproxia of Speech. According to the Mayo Clinic, children diagnosed with Childhood Aproxia of Speech, or CAS, have difficulty making accurate movements when speaking.
“As a result, he often knows what he wants to say,” but can struggle with verbalizing his thoughts, often only able to speak one or two words at a time, the students told the panelists.
The students met Aiden last year for the first time and have been working with him during their free time to understand his needs and develop a device that eases the burdens he faces. After working with him to identify his needs, the group decided to focus on helping Aiden have the ability to express his thoughts to his teachers in a manner that was more comfortable for him.
When they first met in Aiden's classroom at Whitson Elementary School, the students realized that he "is a super cool kid."
“He genuinely likes people and seems like any other third-grader,” the students said. What they discovered was that, without any assistance, Aiden can have a difficult time expressing himself in the classroom, where “it is vital that students be able to communicate with teachers and classmates alike and participate in class discussion.”
Through both Perrin’s hands-off style of mentorship and frequent collaboration with Aiden, the students created a two-way device that uses Bluetooth technology to send and deliver preprogrammed messages between Aiden and his teacher, who would operate a corresponding device.
The students call the device C.H.A.T., which stands for Communication Help with Assisted Technology. C.H.A.T., the students said, is designed so that Aiden can use the array of eight corresponding buttons to communicate common needs, such as “I need a break” or “I want to show you something” and to express answers in the affirmative and negative, for example. The teacher, likewise, has their own preset messages, including “I’ll be there in a minute,” “Breathe and trust yourself,” and “Do you want it explained a different way?” among others.
When Aiden presses a button on his device, a light shows up on the corresponding device to let the teacher know a message has been received.
Each button on the device has a corresponding icon that makes it easier to interpret, not only helping Aiden communicate his needs to his teacher, but also allowing him to participate in classroom discussions without having to vocalize his thoughts.
At the beginning stages, the students had brainstormed more than 50 different messages to include on the device, and with the help of Aiden, his mother Jessica, his teacher, his therapist, and other students who struggle with speech impairments, they whittled down the preset messages to just eight for Aiden to send, and six options for the teacher to return.
“The hope will be to streamline communication,” CC said in a group interview between Columbia Gorge News and the students Thursday at Daubenspeck Park in Bingen.
The students worked together through “lots of Jamboards,” an online collaboration tool that allowed the group to work together in remote settings. The students coded and built circuit boards, and with the help of Aiden, also created a casing for the device in prototype that matches the shape of Aiden’s favorite rock, which “aims to be calming and discreet,” the students told the panelists.
Pictured here is Aiden, holding the prototype casing which will fit C.H.A.T.
Jacob Bertram
Jessica said Aiden remembers the first time meeting Jack at the Gorge MakerSpace workshop, and that he had a lot of fun.
"He was really excited when the team asked him to pick out his favorite rock to lead in the look of the device," Jessica said.
The students said in their presentation that about two children in 1,000 have CAS, and that the device is designed to be compatible for students with selective mutism and other speech disorders. They told the panelists that after Demo Day, they hope to proceed with more extensive user testing.
Dylan told Columbia Gorge News that one thing she learned through the process of invention is that “there are solutions to all sorts of problems you’ve never even thought of before.”
Presenting the group with their first-place award, panelist Sarah Gurman, who works as a product design lead at Dropbox, told the group who made C.H.A.T. that they were taking home the grand prize due to their use of user testing and feedback to narrow down their range of messages that capture a wide range of meaning. They also received praise based on their use of iconography to enhance the device’s usability as well as their product design, which emphasized discreetness.
“You really found a way to use technology to foster human connection, which … at the end of the day is maybe one of the most impactful things inventors can do,” Gurman told the group.
