3.007 DesignEnergy @ Home, Design for Our Elderly

Team 2 Khor Wanxuan (1000456)Song Zhenfeng (1000431)Leon Zhi-Min Abigail (1000732)Tan Wei Feng Andrew (1000466)

Important Stages of Design

Documentation- deliverable documents that will be reviewed and used to complete Design

Information gathering- information from this step will feed into creating our documents

Evaluation- a technique that inspects a prototype or system

ANALYSIS phase

DefineHome: The residential setting the Elderly lives in with their familyElderly: People who are 65 and above, semi ambulant and financially stableEnergy: The strength and vitality required for sustained physical or mental activity.

Site Analysis: Visit Old

Folk’s Home to

understand the user

Background Research

on likely problems

the elderly face

Collation of DataInterview:

Consulted a doctor

from NUH

Narrowing down

More research

on mobility

Problem:mobility

Needs further

narrowing down

Focus on:Elderly who are-semi-ambulant -stay with their family-family members are not around to care of them most of the time-are financially stable

Strategizing

Possible problems in the house

Strategizing for each

area

Causes of mobility problems:-problems with the body such as cartilage loss or diseases-Problems with mindset such as lack of motivation’ resilience

Prototype 1Ideation Phase6-3-5

Focused problem:Falling

More research on falling

Narrow down on

the strategies

Realized we had too

many ideasNarrow down

Prototype2

Looking at existing products

New Idea

Pin Up 2

Methodology

Research

Pin up 1

Airbag Vest

The definition of a fall is: “A sudden, unintentional change in position causing an individual to land at a lower level, on an object, the floor, the ground or other surface”

Falls:-Over 60% of falls that lead to hospitalizations occur in the home.-Falls rates in residential care settings are often considerably higher than those in community or hospital settings.

Prevent falls from occurring

Minimize injury during the fall

MEMS Accelerometer with orthogonal axes detects angles can differentiate between a fall and everyday activity

When you fall, the air bag inflates in less than a tenth of a second to protect the user

Our new Design

Idea

Japan’s Human Airbag worth UK$700

Swenden’s Motorcycle airbag helmet

Ideation Phase6-3-5

Another way to convert electricity is to use something like the shaker flashlight, where the shaking motion create electricityIn our case, we would store the electricityHowever the electricity obtained from this motion is very small.Hence we decided to add an exercise function in our product. Elderly need to pull 2 elastic ropes from stomach to width of arms and from that motion, it shakes the shaker components vigorously, to generate more energy.

Biggest issue faced by the elderly:Mobility

Re-emphasized on Mobility being the biggest issue face by the elderly

Spatial Diagram of

a house

Most accident

prone area- Toilet

We focused on a minor problem- too cold in the bathroom

Concept: Design ThinkingWe have worked towards the goal of addressing the elderly’s mobility instead of addressing the parameters of the problems the elderly faces.