OverLap
Skills: Product Design, Product Management, Low & High Fidelity Prototyping
For Shirley Ryan AbilityLab client in Design Thinking & Communication course at Northwestern University
A rain cover that unobtrusively attaches onto wheelchairs, designed for users with hemiplegia, that allows them to move around freely and fully operate their wheelchair.
I managed my team in designing The OverLap for our client, the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab (a physical medicine and rehabilitation research hospital).
Initially, we came up with three design ideas for which we built low-fidelity functioning prototypes to compare methods of opening and closing the rain cover device. I was challenged with developing a prototype that could be opened and closed with one hand in less than one minute.
The prototype I developed resembled a canopy, extending over the wheelchair to keep the user dry. The canopy could be functioned by a cord that extended from the top of the canopy to beside the wheelchair user’s arm rest, where they could wind and unwind the cord to raise and lower the canopy.
Examining the Canopy Concept
Using these mockups, I led my team through two rounds of User Testing with a patient at the Shirley Ryan AbilityLab.
The prototypes we tested revealed that the canopy concept was too bulky when retracted, and could obstruct the user’s lateral vision when extended, so we moved on to our other idea of incorporating an umbrella.
The main complication that arose was that the act of opening the umbrella was obtrusive to users. From this, our major insight was to use an invertible umbrella that eliminated these issues. This invertible umbrella became the key component of our design.
Our final design was composed of an invertible umbrella upholded by a gooseneck along with a leg cover. The combination of these parts covered the entire user, while still allowing full visibility.
