University of Twente Student Theses
Appearance of a dynamic arm support
Bohan, E. (2016) Appearance of a dynamic arm support.
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| Abstract: | This report is written as a part of the bachelor assignment for the Industrial Design program at the University of Twente. The assignment is executed for Focal Meditech, a company located in Tilburg that designs, produces and supplies different assistive devices. At this moment Focal Meditech is working on the McArm, a Motion Controlled ARM support. The McArm is a dynamic arm support that is placed on a wheelchair and provides independence to perform activities of daily living for users with limited muscle strength. Within the company many specialties are present. All specialties are focusing of the functioning of the product. For this assignment the design and appearance of the outer parts of the McArm are investigated and a final design is accomplished throughout this assignment. The product acceptance and influence on the emotional well-being of the user are two focus points for the research part of this assignment, that is done to answer the following research question: How should the McArm look, for it to be appealing and create acceptance and satisfaction for the user? To answer the research question five phases are passed: the pre-phase, the analysis phase, the ideation phase, the detailing phase and the evaluation phase. For the pre-phase some extra inside information about the product is collected, mostly about the functioning of the product and the interaction with the user. Also the degrees of freedom are show in this phase. During the analysis phase, the problem, the stakeholders, the competition products, the context and the production methods are analyzed. Product related stigma is defined and analyzed as the main problem in product appearance and acceptance. The analysis of the other aspects resulted in a list of requirements that are used to define a possible solution to the answer of the research question. The definition of the possible solution and a design of the McArm is obtained firstly through the ideation phase. This phase contains six different iterations, starting with examining the placement points and numbers of nodes within the product. After the sixth iteration the final shape is defined. With this final shape, four different concept based on the personas from the analysis phase are constructed. These concepts differ from each other in appearance by material, colour and texture choices. These four concepts and the basic shape are evaluated according to the requirements set in the analysis phase. The evaluation consists of some measurements, a questionnaire and a group discussion. This phase results in a concept choice and recommendations for research for improvement of this concept. This final concept is shown in the figure at the bottom of this page and is along with guidelines for designing an appealing and acceptable assistive device the conclusion of this assignment. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | ET: Engineering Technology |
| Subject: | 20 art studies |
| Programme: | Industrial Design BSc (56955) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/71323 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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