Prototype Designs:
#1 Easy to Use Cheese Grater
- Includes faces for each side as well as measurements (3″ base tapers to 2″ at the top, 6″ tall)
- 4 Suction cup base
- Tray to catch food
- Cheese Grater, plastic tray, suctions cups, and adhesive required to prototype
- Actual product material: stainless steel, machine washable plastic, suction cups
#2 Pegboard with Removable Pegs
- Features an adjustable clamp
- Includes suction cups for traction
- Sleek, Wooden design
- Adjustable/removable pegs to hold food in place
#3 Pegboard with Clicking Pegs
- Peg Board that has pegs that click in and out to match the size of food being cut
- Two flat cheese grater designs to make it easy to cut food with back and forth motions instead of up and down motions
- Nine suction cups to keep the peg board in place for any use
- Two drawers underneath the graters to collect the food scraps
#4 Hanging Neck Basket
- Adjustable strap to accommodate all sizes
- 20 inches wide with a curved back to fit firmly around most waists
- Basket is made of a strong, durable plastic
- Compartments allow for easy, organized storage
#5 Rolling Table with Adjustable Height
- Pneumatic pump to raise and lower the table just like standing desks
- Wide enough to fit on top of oven door, and can be tall enough for oven door to be opened underneath table in scenarios where there is not enough space to roll table on top of the oven door
- Reaches 42 inches high, 6 inches higher than standard kitchen counter height
- Weight capacity of 100 lbs
- Comes in different types and colors of wood to match different kitchen themes
Reflection:
This step of the design process is where we could really begin to see our ideas and work come to fruition. Coming together as a team to create new variations of our products helped us create better concepts. This allowed us to critique and build upon our designs which made them better in many ways. One way that nearly all of our designs improved was usability. In the same way that it’s hard to edit your own writing it is easily as hard to edit your own design concepts. There were many times where we were going over an idea and then someone stumbled upon a way that a person who only had use of one arm could not use our product the way it was intended and these discoveries only happened because we were all able to come together and discuss our ideas as a team.
Our team also benefited from the idea of generating early concepts with a focus on quantity through the first few phases of idea generation. Many of our design variations upon our original design concepts are the culmination of multiple members of our team adding on to a variation proposed and then us running with it. Working as a team allowed us to create variations that made great improvements on our original designs and variations that had a clear purpose.
Moving forward, after we come back from the long Thanksgiving Weekend our team plans on improving upon the prototypes we bring back. We will do so using the lessons we have learned so far. We will make sure to think about how we would use the products with one arm. Testing them as if the product was meant for us will be useful in determining if a design needs to be vastly changed or just fined tuned to create a higher-performing product.