Design, Thinking and Communication

Northwestern University - Winter 2019

What is DTC?

DTC is a class in the Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering that is designed to give first-year students hands-on experience with designing for a client. At the beginning of the quarter, teams of four students are given a client from the Shirley Ryan Ability Labs in Chicago, IL who has a patient in need of an assistive or adaptive therapy tool or device. Students are tasked with managing with the client, understanding the needs of the user and designing and prototyping a solution for their needs. At the end of the quarter, design teams deliver a written report along with the completed prototype to the client.

OUr Project

Our team was assigned to work with an occupational therapist from Shirley Ryan. Her patient, our primary user, is an 18-year-old male victim of a gunshot wound. He has a partial spinal cord injury affecting the C6-C7 vertebrae. Initially, his whole body was affected, with limited to no mobility from the elbows down. He has since regained nearly full use of his legs and right arm. He has complete use of all of the muscles in his left arm and wrist, but he is unable to close his hand or manipulate his fingers on the left side. Due to the users injury, he is required to walk with a cane in his dominant (right) side. With the cane in his right hand, he is unable to grasp objects, such as drinks or bags with his affected left hand.

Our goal for this project was to design and produce a product that our user is able to operate autonomously, and which affords him the ability to perform everyday activities, including carrying grocery bags and utilizing exercise equipment.

Existing solutions to our users needs.

Determining design direction

In order to better understand our users needs, we conducted a series of interviews and tests both with our primary user, as well as with a secondary user.

Our first interview was with our client, the OT from the Ability Lab. From her, we learned more about our users injury and his needs. Initially we had thought we would be designing a device to allow our user to grip is cane or walker, but at this first meeting it was revealed that he actually needed something to help him hold onto other everyday objects.

After this initial meeting, we went to a user observation session, where we watched the user interact with his current assistive devices. His previous devices had numerous issues. The tan glove was too restrictive, and our user couldn’t get his fingers inside the glove without assistance. The blue glove provided more independence for the user, but was not strong enough. Based on these meetings, we set out to brainstorm and design prototypes for a future user testing.

Initial designs

Our team started the design process with a lot of brainstorming. Since the rest of our class was working on the same project, we joined with the other teams to brainstorm as a group. During that session, we came up with 60 possible ideas - some fully fledged designs, others solutions to parts of the problems. After this initial brainstorming session with our class, we met again as a team and selected what we thought were the most promising ideas for further review. We grouped these ideas into categories: the basic shape of the glove, attaching the glove to our user, and attaching an object to the glove. After we made this revised list, we each took a different color marker and went through and marked the ideas we felt best about. We then selected the ideas that had the most dots next to them to move into the mockup and prototyping phase.

First prototypes

After we brainstormed and refined the problem scope, we began to build rough mockups to take to user testing. We brought four different designs, each intended to assess a different mechanism or idea so we could decide which might work best for our user.

Our first mockup tested the idea of a twist tighten mechanism on the wrist. This mockup was mostly intended for proof of concept - we did not actually test it with our user. Rather, it told us that a twist tighten mechanism could work if we were able to minimize its profile.

Our second mockup tested our users ability to operate squeeze-and-release buckles, like those found on backpacks. One of the key requirements our user outlined for us was his need to operate the device completely independently, and we hoped that the squeeze-and-release style buckles would facilitate this.

The third mockup was a metal hook that was designed to see how much structure the user required. While a metal hook would limit his mobility, we thought it might provide more support than a fabric glove.

And the final mockup was a flexible wire frame that would wrap around the users fingers and allow him to position them in any position. While we weren’t certain about how we would construct this prototype, we hoped it would provide him with maximum flexibility and use.

Final prototype

From our user testing, we discovered that squeeze-and-release buckles worked well for our user, and that the support the metal hook provided was needed. However, our user wanted more flexibility in his wrist, while still having the support across the fingers that the hook provided.

Based on this feedback, we began developing the final version of the prototype we would present to our client and user. The final design features a machine-washable, lightweight glove body made from neoprene fabric. A strap wraps up around the back of the fingers and over the hand and desired object, attaching at the wrist with a squeeze-and-release buckle. The glove secures around the wrist with two, easy to tighten, double-backed velcro straps, allowing maximum comfort and security. In the palm of the hand is a thin pocket and small metal hook for a removable metal hook. The hook comes in two designs - a curved shape for bags or a rectangular shape for boxes or objects with a right angle. These hooks allow weight to transfer up into the arm and prevent any pinching of the fingers.

final presentation

We delivered the finished prototype, along with a written report to our client at the end of the quarter. Our client liked our finished design and expected the user would as well, although we did not get to see him interact with it.

This project was a good exercise in teamwork, design thinking and building for someone else. Along the way, each step had to be rigorously thought out, tested and designed. Due to the rushed timeline of the quarter system, we were not able to implement some of the things we wished we could, such as more hook shapes and more secure attachment points for the hook. However, I was happy with our delivered result and the feedback from our client.