Reflection – Visualization

Challenge and Selection

I took a course called Mechatronics Device Innovation in which we had to do make a Medical Device for  Patient’s with Parkinson’s disease from scratch. Proper posture is the main concern for these patients  because of their constant use of walker as they apply a lot of force on the handles than required. So, our  main challenge was to think of a way in which we could measure this force and let the patients know while  they are applying a lot of force than required. Thinking of a system which would do the required work and  not affect the patients at the same time was a big challenge as most of these patients are quite old.

This is where the Visualization tool or Visual thinking came into effect. We were a group of four, hence to  achieve a shared understanding and a common ground this was important. This was the first time I had to  use such an approach. We did a lot of brainstorming and visualized scenarios which were almost impossible.  But that was the whole point of this exercise, thinking about the impossible and making something which  would be close to being tangible. Sometimes we might think that an idea isn’t great but somebody else in  the group can make a few tweaks to it and it becomes something that’s possible.

Application and Insight

Just to get the creative juices flowing I always like to play this simple game for about 5 minutes. We have  a balloon; the balloon goes around in a circle and each of us should tell a way in which using this balloon  we could go to outer space. After this, we started by jotting down all the ideas or ways in which we could  deal with the Medical Device challenge. Each of us suggested different ideas and concepts to solve this  problem. Once we had all the concepts written down we started by analyzing each one of them in a sense  that it would be cost effective, efficient and easy to manufacture.

We performed Pugh Chart analysis to narrow down to three main concepts. This is where our main concept  visualization came into effect. I sketched the basic design of the entire system of all the three concepts. The  first concept included the patient wearing a glove which could detect the amount of weight the person was  applying. In this, we realized that that the kind of gloves, sizes would vary a lot. Also, patients in old age  wouldn’t want to wear gloves as it would hinder their other activity. The second concept was having a  sensor that would detect the posture of the person, but this again would mean the patient wearing the sensor.  Our third visualization was having a sensor on the walker handle itself which would measure the force  acting on it. I sketched the entire system with the sensor and all the subsystems. This is the system that we  presented in the class as well.

The sketching of this design helped me in a lot of ways. Having an idea of how the system would look  when it is implemented on the walker, and where changes could be made so that the system would also  look aesthetic on the walker. But more than us, it was important to convey this idea to the people who were  completely new to the concept. When we first mentioned the idea most of the people and the clinicians  didn’t get it. But having made a conceptual sketch of the design helped everyone in figuring how the final  design concept would look. We got a lot of feedback from everyone. This helped in making a few iterations  that improved our system by a whole lot. After this, we converted our simple sketch into a 3D model for an  even better understanding of the shape and size of the entire system.

This was a crucial step in our design process because this is where we first realized how our medical device  is going to look. Having a sketch of a concept helps others to understand what the idea looks like. This also  gave us insight in a way that other people could put in their thoughts and ideas into the sketch to make the  design an even better one. This visual concept helps in collaboration and helps reach a common ground for  everyone.

Approach

Since I now know what a powerful tool visualization can be, I would like to visualize all the ideas and  concepts which we generated initially and not only the final three that we choose. In this way, I feel those  different ideas could maybe mold into an entirely new design idea which we wouldn’t have thought of  unless we sketched them. This tool is a good way to start a discussion or a way to share and learn the  opinions of everyone who is involved in the design process.

