My Design, Thinking, and Communication team worked with a therapist at the Shirley Ryan Abilitylab in Chicago to enable those with hemiplegia and tetraplegia to don a mask without the help of a caretaker. Through the human-centered design process, we created a product that is effective and comfortable for the user.
Our client worked with hemiplegic and tetraplegic patients to increase the mobility and use of their hands and fingers. She saw that a major impediment to their lives during the pandemic was that her patients could not don a mask by themselves, leaving them unable to do a repetitive task essential to their health.
Our key requirements for our solution was to prioritize the independence of the user and to ensure optimal hygiene through securely fitting the mask. Tetraplegic and hemiplegic individuals are more susceptible to COVID and other diseases because their weakened muscles make it harder to cough mucus so hygiene was a top priority.
Our team researched existing methods used by those with tetraplegia and hemiplegia to increase the use of their hands and we found a common thread of different grip techniques or enhanced surface adhesion.
We designed several prototypes that attempted to utilize these techniques in different embodiments to make it easier to don a mask.
However, when we sent our prototypes to our user, we were surprised to find that they didn't find any of the prototypes to be comfortable to use. This perplexed us, as we had tested them on ourselves and struggled to imagine what the prototypes were lacking. But none shocked us more than what the user indicated as the best prototype.
The user rated our mask hooks prototype as the easiest to use and most comfortable to wear. Our team was dumbfounded; we had created the prototype as a desperate measure to satisfy the minimum number of prototypes required for the assignment and we were sure wearing a hat with two command hooks would look too ridiculous to be seriously considered. Yet it performed the best in helping our user don a mask and making our user feel comfortable.
I learned a very important lesson that day on the importance of user feedback. All of my ideas need to be tested out by my users, since users understand the problem better than me.