Run Like a Fish

Today I ran as a guide in the 5K at San Francisco Marathon weekend. I hadn’t had the chance to do a training run with my runner beforehand, so I showed up a little nervous — this was my first time guiding him, and my first time guiding in an actual race at all. I…

A few weeks ago, Professor Síle O’Modhrain’s new book landed on my desk: A Dialogue of the Senses: Designing Interaction with the Body in Mind, out this spring from MIT Press. I’d known it was coming — she’d mentioned it once, almost in passing, the way you mention something you’ve been working on for years. What…

David Lee’s tau theory, and why distance is the wrong thing to measure There’s a moment in every near-miss on a running track that’s worth paying attention to. Not the collision itself. The moment just before it — when you realize something is wrong and your legs change what they’re doing before your conscious brain…

I have some news that still feels a little surreal to write down: Professor Síle O’Modhrain has agreed to serve as the faculty advisor for Run Like a Fish. If you’ve been following this project, you know it started with a deceptively simple question — how do you give a visually impaired runner enough information…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…