In our science 9 class, we are trying to help the daily life of a man with Huntington’s disease. His name is Tim. We are separated into small groups and each group is to create something in an attempt to make the daily life of Tim easier. Some examples of what we are doing are simple television remotes, which my own group is working on, and ways to make getting of the couch easier. These may not seem like large things and they are not, but they may be able to give Tim the chance to live a slightly easier life and that is our true goal. This post is about the research I have done and questions I had asked in order to obtain these results. Now, the essential question I am trying to answer is how can I design and create a remote that suits Tim’s wants and limitations?

Originally, my questions as well as my answers for this post were going to be very different. I was going to try and figure out how remote sensors work, but one of my group mates, Erin had a much better idea. Her idea was to create a case for the television remote Tim uses. This type of idea is much more simple to figure out and implement, but also makes it more difficult to figure out what we are supposed to research. The most important thing for this though, was asking what remote does Tim use? His daughter and caretaker, Nicola, had shown the remote to us during our second face time chat with them. We then learned that we would need to design something that would fit a Shaw remote.

With the most important question we could have asked out of the way, it was time to ask for other details like how does Tim want the remote to look? Should it be big, small, rounded or have edges? Well, the answer we got for that is that size is much more important than shape. It should be large so that there is more to grip and the buttons should also be large and evident to avoid confusion on what each button does. I thought a bit on whether it should be rounded or not and came to the conclusion that it should have soft corners, but not to go as far as making it a sphere or cylinder because something with that shape could easily fall out of anyone’s hands.

Another important detail would be which buttons should we add to the design? When we asked, we got the answer we had assumed we would, that the channel, volume and power buttons would be the necessary buttons, but got a slight surprise when we heard that it would be better if we also included the guide/menu button into the design. Another part to this was the spacing and size of the buttons. We will have to try and space them out and make them very large, as well as label each one.

Before we had the second and very informative chat with Tim and Nicola, we already had this idea. We would not have known what to ask if we had not after all. We wanted to find out, has anyone done something like this before? How did it turn out and why did they do it like that? We found a few things, some of them actually being remotes specifically designed for seniors because our aim was something similar to that, but one that stuck out was a five step guide on creating a senior remote that we found. The reason this stuck out was because it gave us a way to label the buttons on our remote case. If we are able to, we can iron on the design to fabric and attach it to the remote.

Another important question for us would be how are we going to design it? Luckily for us, our science teacher, Mr. Robinson, came to our rescue by signing up the class for Tinkercad. Tinkercad will let us create a design which we will eventually print out using a 3-D printer. So far my design has no legitimate detail, but we can use this for creating lots of different shapes and details, including sizing. The extra red block just hanging around on my design is meant to be the top of the case, which is where I will try to design something that fits Tim’s wants.

The last question we had, is that if we need to extend the buttons for whatever reason, what type of button would be the most simple to add? Erin found that a spring based button would probably be the most simple to add. We all agreed that we would either try to find a spring based one or buy some if it came down to it and we are able to. I could have probably spent a bit more time trying to figure out how we would implement the buttons as well as how I would be able to get them and what sizes I would have access to as well as how I might be able to modify them if necessary.

Overall, the process did not end up taking to long and went very well. Even if the innovation is not necessary, the process was fun and I am still more than happy to be able to help Tim in any way I can.

Resources:

“Senior Remote.” Instructables, Instructables, 11 Nov. 2017, www.instructables.com/id/Senior-Remote/

Mepham, Tim and Nicola chat with class

https://www.tinkercad.com/

Weisner, Erin