Describe my partner
Our partner is Lamb. She is easy-going and she loves drawing. She is kind (she worries about other people with disabilities and hopes to help them) and very smart.
Desires and difficulties
Our partner wants to go outside on her own but she cannot achieve this dream because of her physical disabilities. When going out, there are many difficulties she will face such as she cannot open, hold an umbrella and control the electric wheelchair with her right hand at the same time on rainy days.
Project Description & Process
Description
Our project is an umbrella holder that can be attached stably to a wheelchair. It consists of a stretchable stick and a light umbrella, which is easy to be opened with one hand. One side of the stick should be attached to the wheelchair. The connection should be strong enough so that it will not fall down during the movement. Another side of the stick should be the holder of an umbrella.
Process
This week we tried to use the material we have so far to make a prototype in function. We have a light umbrella, stretchable stick we got from Taobao, two types of guerilla pods.
We tried to take the joints of stretchable sticks out and separate the legs of guerilla pods from their main body. Then we tried to install the joints to one side of guerilla pods’ leg so as to make the whole stretchable stick rotatable. We used a small pod for the first try. We successfully connected the joint with one side of the pod leg. But the leg is not strong enough to hold an umbrella. When we straightened up the umbrella, the leg bend, and the umbrella fell down. So the first try failed. For the second try, we used a stronger pod leg for rotating the part. However, we realized that the stronger leg was too big for the joint, we could not connect them together. It seems that our prototype has been stuck. Also, because of the lack of communication and touch with users, we cannot measure the size of the wheelchair and test the capability of our partner, we cannot promote the progress by ourselves.