In our Assistive Technology class, I and my teammates are partnered with a girl named Siyi, or we usually call her Lamb. Because of hypoxia that happened on her birth—in which her body was deprived of the necessary oxygen—her body, brain, and other organs were damaged and never fully recovers. Thus, she has been living in a wheelchair for most of her life. Even so, she still keeps her spirit and warmth as she tried to help others by sharing her kindness. She is very communicative and eager to be involved in our projects. Even with the language barrier that I struggled with since I don’t speak Chinese, she’s very expressive in communicating what she desires and expectations. Her mother also helped a lot in bridging the conversation between us and Lamb. We are very grateful to have been working with her in the past weeks.
Lamb’s desire is to be able to go out by herself. In other words, she wants to be more independent. However, living in a wheelchair significantly impact the options that she has in order to acquire independency. Simple tasks can sometimes be very difficult due to the limitations caused by the wheelchair. For example, she mentions that going to the bus are hefty because there is no ramp to bridge the gap between the ground and the bus. Another thing that she mentions is that she has difficulties using an umbrella during rains. Her mother is the one that is usually holding the umbrella, so she wants a way to hold the umbrella for herself. That will surely help her become more independent. In addition to that, the umbrella will be attached to her electronic wheelchair, so that she can freely move and control the umbrella.
Our project is centered on solving her umbrella problem. We think that it is important to provide her with a way to go through the rainy season with the umbrella at hand. We also decided to focus on the case when she doesn’t know for sure if it’s going to rain or not, so she’s going to bring the umbrella as a precaution. Her mother can help her put the umbrella on the holder before going out. When she goes out and It starts to rain, she can turn the rotation of the holder, and tighten the stick by spinning a knob. Afterward, she will have to push the umbrella upwards to open it. We thought about using an automatic umbrella, but it was too heavy on her. We don’t want the umbrella to suddenly collapse on her due to the weight. A raincoat is also ineffective as it is hard to put the raincoat on her body. Therefore, we concluded that this was the best scenario for our project.
Last week we were supposed to have our last user testing before the presentation. Unfortunately, Lamb was not able to come because she was not feeling well. This is also another reason why we think it is important to provide her with an umbrella, so she won’t catch a cold. Then, we brainstormed for a while and made many prototypes to fix the problem with the joint. Initially, we wanted to make the joint very easy to rotate but also strong enough to hold the weight of the umbrella. We used a gorilla pod leg as the joint of the stick, but after testing, we realized that it was not strong enough to hold the weight of the umbrella. There is a bigger gorilla pod leg, but it is too hard to separate. Thus, the only choice we have left is to ask Lamb next week whether she can operate the umbrella holder by herself.
pic1. the holder
pic2. The gorilla pod holder