Eric Westacott, who has been a lawyer for decades, signs a lot of legal documents.
But he has a spinal injury, and it’s become more difficult to write.
“As I’ve aged that ability has diminished,” he said. “I had to find a new device I could use independently to accomplish that same goal.”
Enter the Washington University Make-a-Thon, an event in its second year in which students design and produce a prototype of a functional tech device for people with disabilities.
People from different fields work together to create a product for a person with a disability – such as Westacott, said Marit Watson, an occupational therapy professor at the university.
“The Make-a-Thon really looks at connecting engineering and occupational therapy students with people living in the community with disabilities,” she said. “We call them co-designers, and they actually pitch an idea that then the students work on over a 10-day period to fulfill a need with a usable product.”
10 busy days
A co-designer presents a problem to a team on the first day. Students design, refine and construct a solution to the issue. At the end of the event, the co-designer should have a prototype they will be able to use.
The teams are made up of about a half-dozen undergraduate and graduate students from the occupational therapy and engineering schools. They have to stick to a loose budget of around $50, and they can use laser cutters, 3D printers and other equipment at the engineering school.
Engineering student Cordell Eddings said his team made more than a dozen prototypes while working on Westacott’s pen problem.
“The cool thing was that each one of them had their own different features, whether it was magnets or him using his mouth to operate the thing that we made,” Eddings said.
Westacott ended up with not one but two prototypes for a pen device to help him sign his name. One features a pen attached to a rolling device, which won an award at the last day of the Make-a-Thon.
“Essentially it’s a little cart,” he explains. “And there are three posts in which I put my hand in a neutral position attached to a pen, and I move my hand across the page to sign my name. ... The students worked and did a wonderful, wonderful job to solve that issue!”
Eight new devices
This year's Make-a-Thon yielded eight projects.
One was a wearable harness that helped a person with hand tremors eat and drink. The harness, which looks a little like a backpack without a bag, placed tension on the wearer’s hands to reduce shaking.
Some of the inventions were more high tech.
For example, the Boil-and-Beep connected to a pot of water with a flexible tripod. The device scanned the water in the pot and made a noise once the liquid began to boil, a useful safety feature for a person who can’t see. The Boil-and-Beep won the “most innovative” award at the end of the blitz.
Co-designer Sarah Jean Schwegel plays power soccer, a sport designed for people who, like her, use a power wheelchair.
Power soccer players use a lightweight cage-style guard that wraps around the bottom of a wheelchair, allowing the user to push the ball around the court.
The guards and chairs usually are expensive. Schwegel asked her team to make an affordable guard so college kids can play recreationally.
“I proposed the Make-a-Thon teams build a guard for as close to $50 as possible, and have it attachable to an everyday chair, so that people who are interested in trying soccer but don’t want to drop $15,000 on a competition chair can try it,” she said.
The team created an affordable cage made out of PVC pipes (painted purple), luggage straps and zip ties. Schwegel said she wants to put instructions to make the “Revolution Guard” online, so that everyone can make one.
Working together
The inventors said it wouldn’t have been possible to make the devices without every member of the team bringing his or her own skills to the challenge.
Occupational therapy students have good ideas about what people need, said Lindsey Lehrfeld, an occupational therapy student who worked on the tension harness team.
“I feel like as an occupational therapy student, we focus a lot on function and participation and making it fit for the client,” she said. “I feel like it's easy to have those ideas as an OT student, but I feel like the engineering minds are really good at building and knowing angles and physics and all that stuff that works together.”
In the end it all came together, Lehrfeld said.
“It was a great way to combine thought and action to be able to create a product together,” she said.
