Industrial design students improve wheelchairs

By EVELINE RADU

During the harsh winter weather earlier this year, one BYU student experienced frustration, insecurity and impatience while trying to get his way around in an electric wheelchair.

Riding electric wheelchairs for at least four hours a day for the first weeks of the previous winter semester was part of a research project Elmer Brent and 11 other students from BYU's industrial design program worked on.

Brent said they had to ride the bus, use the elevators, go grocery shopping, use restrooms, pick up books from high book shelves in the library, and use a drinking fountain. These normal, yet challenging tasks were supposed to be done while riding in an electric wheelchair.

The students had to get a feeling of the utility and the comfort a wheelchair provides to those who use it on a daily basis and come up with ideas to improve the use of electric wheelchairs.

To do so "we tried to get into their (wheelchair users') shoes," Brent said.

Professors Paul Skaggs, Richard Fry and Brian Howell were the initiated this project. With the help of Col Jones, an employee of the Pride Mobility wheelchair company and the sponsor of the project, BYU students received six electric wheelchairs to study and re-design.

Each year there is a different project students work on. So far they have worked for companies like Dell, Intel and Nokia. The purpose of these projects is to bring variety into the program, which requires creativity and innovation, and also to help students to get a glimpse of what they will deal with when they get a real job.

"We want them to learn to think outside their own field," Skaggs said. "We like projects that are outside of the knowledge and experience our students have."

The project consisted of the following steps: finding the problem, talking to people who are using electric wheelchairs, observing the inconveniences they experience and coming up with solutions. Once these steps were completed, the students made quarter-scale models of the new electric wheelchair and an informational poster and presented them to the Pride Mobility Company.

"The community would be reached by what Pride Mobility decides to do with the information and research we did for them," said Laura Davey, a senior in Industrial Design. "We did it for the company."

The 8-inch scale models built by the BYU students were improved with a new fold-up system which would give the chairs better functionality for household use and help those with disabilities to become more independent.

The projects did not bring a change for the Pride Mobility Company only, but also for the students who worked on this project. They have learned how to more fully appreciate those who have special needs.

"I have more respect for them and for their challenges," Steele said.

eveline_radu@yahoo.com