Living With Neuropathy
Engineering for Humanity, Spring 2013
Engineering for Humanity is a course offered in partnership with the local towns. This semester, it was in partnership with the Natick Council on Ageing. The class is also in part funded by the Metro-West Health Foundation, which is interested in how a class like this changes perceptions on ageing.
In this class, we worked with elderly adults in Natick to discover their needs and values as well as opportunities to design a simple solution to a problem they were facing. My partner and I worked with a couple and eventually focused on the husband who faced diabetes and neuropathy, which caused stiffness in the soles of his feet. We desigend 3 massging devices that would allow him to massage different parts of his feet to relieve the pain he felt.
In the course of manufacturing our designs, we employed wood working, composites and rubber molding to create our three final products. Our final design report is available below.
In this class, we worked with elderly adults in Natick to discover their needs and values as well as opportunities to design a simple solution to a problem they were facing. My partner and I worked with a couple and eventually focused on the husband who faced diabetes and neuropathy, which caused stiffness in the soles of his feet. We desigend 3 massging devices that would allow him to massage different parts of his feet to relieve the pain he felt.
In the course of manufacturing our designs, we employed wood working, composites and rubber molding to create our three final products. Our final design report is available below.
| final_design_report_team_cooks.pdf |