HuskyADAPT toy hackathon event with Microsoft

Younger woman in purple giving a presentation on two projection screens in a design space while a many others wearing green shirts look on Several people, two in green shirts and one in a black shirt, listen to a young gentleman in a gray jacket as he talks about the toys in front of him

Alyssa Spomer along with HuskyADAPT (Accessible Design & Play Technology) hosted the first-ever adapted toy Hackathon with Microsoft. The event combined design and toy adaptation, as teams of HuskyADAPT students and Microsoft employees worked together to adapt toys and develop new designs for adapted toy switches and switch mounts.

Groups of people sitting around wooden tables with parts strewn about, many of them wearing greens shirts, with a younger gentleman writing on a white board with another gentleman smiling at the table and examining what he is writing  A woman wearing a orange jackets and black shirt and a man wearing a green shirt smiling while holding a toy in front of a workshop

Over 25 Microsoft employees joined 20 students, including the Steele Lab’s own Alyssa Spomer, Nicole Zaino, Charlotte Caskey, and Elijah Kuska, in the CoMotion MakerSpace for this community-focused and adaptive driven workshop.

Large group of individuals smiling in a workshop while holding toys

During the day-long hackathon, over 20 toys were adapted to incorporate a new switch mechanism to facilitate play and several new inexpensive switches, toy-type converters, and switch mounting systems were designed and prototyped.  Thank you to the Microsoft employees, for their willingness and commitment to assist those in need, the CoMotion MakerSpace volunteers, for allowing us to use their space, and our HuskyADAPT team and lab members, for their dedication to outreach events.