During this week, our project goal was to starting the Swim Support device design process to our client, Liam Smith. After doing research in the end of the last week, we got a good background of the last project. Allie was part of this team last semester, which is really good for us. She got a great knowledge about the project and is really good having someone like Allie in the group, with this last Prototype experience. I’m sure that is going to be really helpful for us.

Our User has cerebral palsy and after watching the videos became clear that was incredibly difficult to accurately simulate his lack of muscle of control. In the previous project, testing the device with him was dangerous and failed major design criteria.

So, after that, we started thinking a way to simulate his uncoordinated movements. The idea that we had was using a plastic dummy that we bought on Amazon. His name is Mortimer, we picked his name via using random name generator. After Mortimer arrived, we started the tests in the pool to simulate our client movements. We used water, air, weights and all the solutions that came up when we were at the pool, but just after coming back to the OEDK we got other best idea. We decided to use a lifejacket full of sand, because his uncoordinated was being well simulated, however the weight was not with fidelity. We did human body weight division according to the body parts.

After all the Pugh scoring, we decided which one was going to be our final design. That’s a low fidelity prototype of the final design idea.

After building the prototype, we started ordering materials.

Basically, our final design consists of an inner tube with backrest, modified with straps to provide extra support and a special mesh seat with extra support underneath the knees and to submerge our user’s body lower into the water.

We then researched different configurations and materials for straps, in order to provide support for our user, while still being comfortable and easy to use.

In the end of the week we did a small, medium-fidelity belts, then testing them ourselves to settle on a final design.

Rafael V. Lantmann

#goteamswimsupport