On a brisk but sunny day in Austin, we somehow slithered our way through the skinny campus streets of the University of Texas, and set up shop on Speedway Plaza, one of the most trafficked thoroughfares for students.
After a lecture in the architecture department’s Goldsmith Hall, we brought a pack of students, teachers, and passersby out to the trailer. As usual, the big hits were the Hippo Roller, Whirlwind Wheelchair and Adpative Eyecare glasses, though a few in particular took a liking to some of the water filtration devices and asked about the difference between the pricey Lifesaver bottle and the Lifestraw.
We were also visited by members of our amazing Project H Austin team, spearheaded by Chris Lovin, Julie Heard and Rob Moser of Mixer and Kate Canales of frogdesign. The team is currently working on a re-design of the “quiet rooms” at a local foster care home. Also in attendance was a 12-year old student named Jessica, who came by just as we were closing up shop to do some on-site “research” for a class project.
We are also in the process of setting up our solar rig (below), provided by RayTracker, by which we’ll be able to charge our battery that then powers our lights at night.
Because of our central location, we got a lot of “what the hell”s? and “what’s going on here?”s from students in between classes, and were happy to get non-design students excited about the working on projects that matter.
Thanks to Charlton Lewis and Marcy Shaw for helping with the organization of a great day at UT!
