How can physical differences revolutionize design thinking?

All you have to do is to ask the latest participants of our BOOST by Born Just Right workshop held this past weekend in Cambridge, MA. Over the course of two days, most of our eight attendees had new prototype concepts to show off at the Cambridge Innovation Center as part of the week-long Cambridge Science Festival.

Kayla and Tulle presented their prototypes together at the CIC event space.

Led by Born Just Right's Senior Program Director Kate Ganim and Design Director Sam Hobish along with workshop facilitators (Jewel Lin, Coby Unger, Jimmy Chin, Kelly Sanford & Stephanie Vasquez), the BOOST workshop consisted of two days of design learning and prototype building in the Microsoft Garage at the Microsoft New England facility in Cambridge.

It was an exciting process to be part of! We watched participants learn how to take a concept and bring it to reality. They learned about failure and success. In the end, each and every person should be super proud of their hard work. Check out the video we shared with the audience that helps give a better picture of what it’s like to attend a BOOST by Born Just Right workshop.

Each workshop participant presented concepts from the workshop and/or from previous workshops. The list of ideas includes a wrist keyholder (named "Key to Success"), a secret gum holder (named "The Infinity Water Bottle"), a unicorn that could spit glitter, a compressed-air-powered nerf shooting arm (named "Armed and Ready"), a dog-walking prosthetic arm (named "Two-Point-Woah"), and a party popper arm. During our presentation in CIC, each workshop participant found out they each earned a $100 grant from Born Just Right if they’d like to continue iterating their prototype concept!

How did we make that possible? Because of donors like you!

We want to thank the Cambridge Innovation Center for sponsoring our design night reception and the Cambridge Science Festival for hosting our public event with additional sponsorship support from Helping Hands Foundation, STEM on Stage, and the Boston International Kids Film Festival. It was so exciting to share more details about our work to the Cambridge community.

And we want to thank our workshop participants (Caleb, Jordan, Kayla, Tulle, Julia, Aiden, Asmani & Jordan, plus our fabulous alum Kenzie) as well as parents, siblings and the community who joined us to celebrate these innovative designs!

Our workshop participants did an awesome job showing off their prototypes.

Microsoft New England’s Garage space was perfect to give everyone the space to brainstorm and collaborate with each other. The maker space had everything we needed to build designs and develop different physical prototypes. There was everything from saws and a sewing machine to 3D printers. Special thanks to Microsoft’s Jesse Grupper and Vince Kraft for volunteering their time and going above and beyond to help us accomplish our goals.

Our volunteer facilitators worked one-on-one with most of our workshop participants.

Behind the scenes, we have to thank our events team including STEM on Stage’s Jen Myronuk and Kellyanne Mahoney of Autodesk for their enthusiasm and early support in helping us make local connections and secure venue space with our sponsors. With big thanks to both Peggy Ganim and Jen Myronuk for their tireless energy in managing the weekend logistics and providing all of the delicious food during the workshop & reception (including the best homemade cookies!). We are also very thankful to ChillyBears Design for making sure we had t-shirts for everyone to wear!

We can't forget to send out a shoutout to Samantha Kubota who donated her time to document and share the weekend experience through photos and video!

• Huge thank you to the Cambridge Science Festival!

• Everyone was incredible during our public presentation at Cambridge Innovation Center

• Our awesome crew after the big public presentation

• We LOVED the Microsoft Garage space

In two days, we watched the magic that comes from our BOOST workshops. It is so exciting to watch more participants discover how cool it is to build ideas for themselves. It’s even more awesome watching everyone work together and support each other. Thanks so much to our Born Just Right families for jumping in and trusting the process of learning design and turning ideas into reality.

If you believe in our work, we are asking for your support. Connect us to potential sponsors (email: info [at] designwithus [dot] org) or please consider donating to Design With Us. We are ready to keep growing!