on September 24th, we had a Skype chat with Tim Mepham and his daughter Nicola. Tim has Huntington’s disease which is a brain disorder that is caused by a single defective gene on chromosome 4. Tim and his daughter live in Nicola lodge, and we contacted them to find some way we can help Tim and his daughter. what i found interesting was that before Tim had this disease he was in perfect health and there was nothing wrong with him and he was fantastic at drawing. i felt bad for Tim but i also felt like we can do something to make Tim’s life a bit easier.

we started to brainstorm some ideas  to help Tim, so we all got placed into little groups and started to brainstorm. we first thought about what challenges Tim had in his daily life. the main ones that we had were, Tim had trouble getting on and off the couch, using the TV remote, using his computer mouse, and he wanted to draw because he was unable to. some ideas we came up with were , a simplified remote for the TV, a motorized ramp up and down the couch we can put handle bars in between the cushions so that it is easier the get on and off the couch, and a cool gloves that have like little bits of lead on his finger tips so that he can draw. i want to do all the other cool ideas like the gloves or the ramp but i feel like it would be a way to big of a project for this semester alone, so that being said i would probably like to focus on the simplified remote for the TV. i feel like we would need help from the grade 12 students that are in the power tech class, for they know more about this sort of stuff and can help us figure out more about what we want to do and if this would be a simple and cheap task or a very cost effective and difficult task. however i’m not entirely sure that they will know this kind of stuff so i’m not sure if they would be good at helping us with this project?

i researched the found out that this project is quite common and they even have a name for it, “senior remote”. most of these projects are people making very simple remotes for their parents that have some sort of disability. i found this information from website i found which i will link at the bottom of the post. from what i can see, the skills that are needed for this project are, beingable to use textile electronics, soldering iron, and overall being aware of technology(wires and stuff like that). some materials you need are, Scissors, Soldering Iron, Iron, Screwdriver, Hot Glue Gun, Felt, Fabric Glue, Iron-On Transfer Printer Paper, Cardboard, Small Gauge Wire, White Fabric, remote, and you need Conductive Fabric “Zelt”(remember this is not for all the simple remotes, this is only for one, that i found on the internet). the steps you need to take to “build” this remote are all on the website so if you are interested click the link at the bottom of this post! i also found that someone just added button blockers so that their parents couldn’t click the wrong buttons, which is way more simpler.

to be honest, our Solution Fluency process wasn’t really good. we did get a little confused at times, which may be the reason that our process wasn’t so great. if i were to say myself, the quality of my post is pretty good but not the best, and there were many things i would improve on. some of the things that i can improve on is adding more relatable pictures/media, i did add some pictures but i should have added a video but i tried to add a video but it didn’t work. another thing that i can improve on is adding more details to my post because i feel like there was detail in my paragraphs but that there could have been more.

website: https://www.instructables.com/id/Senior-Remote/