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Running for a Reason: The Bionic 5K
This May, I participated in the Bionic 5K — a race put on by the Bionic Project to support adaptive athletes and inclusive sports. The official race was held in Cambridge, MA, but with finals season in full swing, I ran my 5K here in San Francisco instead. Different coast, same mission. The Bionic Project’s…
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Looks Like vs. Acts Like: A Day at Stanford CHAT
The most useful thing I learned all month was the difference between two kinds of prototypes I spent a Saturday at Stanford as an observer at CHAT — Co-design for Health and Athlete Technology. I wasn’t old enough to participate, so I just watched. That turned out to be its own kind of useful, because…
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Walking Tech Doesn’t Run: A Field Survey
Twenty-plus products, six categories, one stubborn gap Full assessment, with the coverage matrix and per-product detail, is in the Technology Landscape companion paper. If you’ve been following along, you already know the shape of the problem. The Stress Wall is real. Cognitive load scales nonlinearly with velocity. The lateral line, the bat call, and the…
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Field Notes from Reed Elementary
Seven-year-olds on crutches, and what they reminded me about inclusive design This is a different kind of post. No cognitive load functions, no product survey, no Phase II roadmap. Just a morning at an elementary school, and a few things I’m still thinking about on the drive home. Reed Elementary hosted the Bionic Project seminar…
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The Treadmill, the Tether, and the 50-Mile Question
What two runners taught me about the real cost of dependent mobility I’ve been training with Achilles International in San Francisco as part of my research into assistive technology for visually impaired runners. Every other Sunday morning, I show up as a guide — and every time, I leave having learned more than I contributed.…
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The Hidden Wall That Stops a Lot of Runners Before They Even Start
Most people think the hardest part of running is physical. Bad knees.No time.Bad weather. But for millions of people with low vision, the biggest barrier isn’t fitness. It’s brain overload. I recently wrote a white paper called Breaking the Cognitive Barrier to Independent Running in Low Vision, and the main argument is simple: Independent running…
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3.8 Billion Years of R&D: Applying Biomimetics to Visually Impaired Running
Movement is independence. As a soccer player and track runner, I’ve always taken for granted the “flow state”—that moment where your legs take over, your mind goes quiet, and you just move. But recently, while watching a visually impaired runner training with a guide at my local track, I realized that for millions of people,…