Our class had a chance to call (again) Tim Mepham and her daughter Nicola who’s assisting him, they are staying at a place called Nicola lodge (nursing home in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia)
Tim has Huntington’s disease which is an inherited disorder that results in the death of brain cells. We contacted them to ask questions about their experiences and his struggles for us to come up with different ideas/ways to help them out. Nicola answered our questions and Tim tried to answer some. I feel more motivated to help them out when we were discussing about his/their struggles.
We started ito deliberate various plans on what object will we make to help him with his struggles. Our class is placed into groups to start planning. Tim have multiple struggles which is sitting and getting up on the couch, using the TV remote and drawing because he will have a hard time since one of the symptoms in Huntington’s is movement disorder.
Since most of the groups in our class planned on doing a simplified remote and something to help Tim sitting and getting up in the couch, we decided to do something that will help him get back on doing art.
Since I missed the day when they first call Tim, my group started on planning already on how the model of our object would look like. We still discussed if there’s any more possible ways to improve our plan. At first I didn’t come up with ideas so i decided to research even more to get the concept even better.
Our group’s main objective is to make something to help him draw so there’s many parts that we can focus to.
I looked over hand models and plan on where/how we’re gonna put the object we’re making to Tim’s hands and/or finding a comfortable grip to help him draw.
I really liked the way this looks like because it’s simple yet helpful. This interest me because I want him to draw again without struggling. There are many people that can help me with this task. I can ask help from my group, ask opinions from other groups and ask more questions about Tim to Mr Robinson.
This picture is the same as the first one but different style of grip. This uses only 1 circular hole for you to grip on. I think for Tim, the first picture might be more helpful.
other pictures for us to get ideas from to help us come up with more new ideas:
this can improve the way he draws and it helps give more control, and reduces hand fatigue that comes with writing the wrong way.
I need to be well-informed on how Thinkercad works on how I can make my own model on my device and how the 3D printer will process the object that I made. Our group needs to help each other make something for Tim and to print it but it’s not gonna be easy if we don’t know the basics.
The solution fluency process went well. Although I could’ve done better since I have no idea at first since it was hard to me to know something i’m not quite sure of. It’s much better if I came up with questions to ask while talking to Tim because he and Nicola answer it on the spot.
For my opinion, my post doesn’t seem that bad but could’ve been better with more creative ideas. I could’ve improve on my idea much better.
https://www.designboom.com/
https://brightautism.org/