Lisa Reisman Photo
Imagining the Hiptec Suit Version 1
Behold the Hiptec Suit Version 1, a VR full suit created by a group of 10 eighth graders from Truman School on a field trip to DAE, formerly known as the afterschool program District Arts + Education.
Portable, adjustable, and a lightweight microfiber nylon, it features a body tracking belt that regulates the user’s temperature, a sensor that recognizes anxiety and tells you to breathe, and the option for virtual reality therapy sessions.
There’s just one caveat. Hiptec Suit Version 1 exists only on a whiteboard.
A.M. Bhatt, founder and CEO of DAE.
And that’s the point, according to A.M. Bhatt, founder and CEO of DAE, which has partnered with New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) as an official afterschool extension to train high school students from traditionally underserved communities in computer science, coding, and web design. (Each student receives a $10,600 scholarship to be able to attend at no cost.)
DAE, which recently moved from James Street to its current space at 770 Chapel St. in the Ninth Square district, also offers a four-month adult education skills academy for people finishing their GED to gain computer specialist skills in New Haven.
“The school district asked if we would start exposing our work to kids who are eligible to join us next year,” said Bhatt, adding that the organization has been welcoming roughly 50 NHPS eight graders each week for a hands-on tech experience centered around solving problems using digital tools.
“Our whole idea is first to teach kids how to think in the context of the world we’re in, how to frame questions of what works and won’t work,” he said.
“And then when they log into an AI like GPT‑4,” the latest iteration of Open AI, “they already have an idea of what they want the item to be and then we can teach them to use technology to get answers on the details, what it would take to get there, manufacturing issues.”
It’s all part of a larger mission of the nonprofit, one that explains why the nonprofit legally changed its name to DAE, pronounced “day.”
Among the reasons: “It’s my day,” he said. “We work with black and brown, LGBTQIA+, all the underrepresented groups in technology, so this is to signify that it’s my day to be in this industry, it’s my day to do this kind of work.”
Nia Anderson ideating with eighth graders.
In front of a large whiteboard during Wednesday’s field trip, Nia Anderson was prompting students to reflect on the limitations of smart phones and imagine something better.
“We’re thinking that there should be a phone with a bracelet that will have microboosters that can teleport — ” said a student named Mustafa, then stopped.
“Now that I say it out loud,” he said, his voice trailing off.
“Listen,” said Anderson, who graduated from DAE’s adult program before joining the organization. “Nothing is off-limits.”
“It should be super-light and we also put in a teleport station with different pods around the area in a 30-mile radius,” said another student.
“So it can help officers and first responders, or if a kid gets lost, parents can get notified and locate them with a GPS,” said Yisel Salas.
Kelly Casey with Ashley Pinos.
Over at the Hiptec Version 1 whiteboard, a discussion ensued on issues that might surround virtual therapy.
“It’ll be free,” said Ashley Pinos.
“How do the therapists make money?” Kelly Casey, school counselor at Truman School, asked.
“They get money from the ads,” a student answered.
By then, the field trip was drawing to a close. Bhatt took the stage.
A.M. Bhatt.
“I want you to picture in your mind a secretary,” he began. “What do they look like, what are they wearing, where are they sitting, what do they have in front of them.”
“I’m willing to bet almost all of you are seeing a woman,” he went on. “Siri has a female voice, Alexa has a female voice, so does Google assistant. Without intending it, we’re teaching another generation to associate a female voice with helper, with assistant.”
It goes beyond that, according to Bhatt.
“The automatic soap dispensers in the bathroom,” he said. “You put your hands underneath and a lot of them to this day will work on white skin, but not black or brown skin because the technology doesn’t recognize that kind of skin.”
That didn’t happen, he said, “because someone was saying: How can we perpetuate this stereotype for another generation, but because there aren’t enough people in the room who think differently, see differently, live differently, are different. It just doesn’t occur to them.”
Bhatt said he and his mother came to New Haven from India when he was six. “Back in my day, they called us illegals, now they call it undocumented,” he said. “I used to ride my bike around Fair Haven. My first job was at a laundromat on Ferry Street.”
After college, he worked in technology. “I met really cool people who worked at Facebook, Apple, Google, Pfizer, but no one who understood what it was like to ride around Fair Haven at 10 o’clock on a Thursday night,” he said. “There was no one who understood what it was like to be an undocumented immigrant.”
“No one making those decisions knew about any of that, and so technology, it’s in clothing, it’s in footwear, it’s in everything,” he said. “We are rebuilding the world using technology.”
“What we’re here to do is to prepare a new generation of people who can make things that represent everybody,” he said.
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