The Paradox of Simplicity: A Design Process Driven by Approachability
Error! Error!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I squinted my eyes at the sight of the 50 keys on the remote control, trying to find the energy to remember which key I was looking for in the first place. Miles away, in a different time zone, my best friend was trying to cook some noodles for dinner. She reached for the tall top shelf and gently pulled. SMASH! CLACK! BAM!
…ouch
Most of these incidents that we encounter all around the world all the time can be seen in a range of anywhere between mild inconveniences to total disasters blamed on ‘Human error’. What we don’t always realize is that these problems are gatekeeping many people from everyday tasks. And blaming yourself for ending up in such situations is relatable, but a completely wrong way to look at it.
Let me rephrase… It's not you. It’s the design. Because we are human. Our part is to stumble and make errors. It’s the things, designs, and services around us that have to be usable by us. Approachable. Accessible.
The Course: Simple Product Design
Task One: The beginning
I was asked by our faculty to bring a few of my favorite products to one place to try to analyze and get a general understanding of what my domain* would look like.
What are their design features like? What functions do I find interesting in them? What piques my interest? What do these products have in common?
It was like a self-analysis of what “domain” I’m drawn towards.
I chose products based on certain characteristics that I usually prefer in things. But the pattern became clear only when I had spread them out side by side.
- **Domain in this context means the specific area of research and design that would act as the backbone of this course for the individuals. E.g.- Human Factors, Storage, Experience Design, Materials, and Sustainability, etc.
My list led me to certain words that I could further look into.
An Introduction to Accessibility Design.
“Accessibility is the concept of whether a product or service can be used by everyone-”
- Interaction design foundation.
Types of Inacessibilities
So that covered, there are different types of accessibility design.
•Visual (e.g., color blindness) 80 percent of accessibility issues are related to blindness.
•Motor/mobility (e.g., wheelchair-user concerns)
•Auditory (hearing difficulties)
•Seizures (especially photosensitive epilepsy)
•Learning/cognitive (e.g., dyslexia)
Ability barriers can also arise for any user:
- Incidental (e.g., sleep-deprivation)
- Environmental (e.g., using a mobile device underground)
At this point, the faculty had grouped me with people who were working on similar domains. All of us fell under the umbrella of “Simple yet Interesting Designs”
This really helped me pace things faster as I was able to cross-reference my research and get instant feedback from my peers.
There were many terms used around accessibility, equitable design, inclusive design, universal design, and so on. Each has its own niche.
But oftentimes most products overlap these niches.
To bring some method to the madness, I started dumping reference concepts and products into this graph.
This helped me stay organized, and I could now get some direction. Because of the limitations constraining the scope of this project, like time and my work-from-home situation, I had to move forward with the simple and small quadrant.
The more researched, the more I found myself diverging away. Universal design, Design for Accessibility, and so on were vast umbrella terms.
So, to avoid any disasters, I went back to my product choice graph and tried to look at what they have in common. I noticed they were all mostly inclusively designed for people with Musculoskeletal Disorders, diseases like Arthritis, and so on. Often Involving back, wrist, fingers, etc.
I started off with a simple mind map of typical inaccessibilities in the person’s environment.
Incorporating A E I O U
AEIOU is a method that provides ethnographic researchers with a framework for recording and classifying observations and information about their subject’s Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users.
As now my user has been defined, I tried again to fill in the blanks.
And this was the final result.
What I’ve tried to do here is go through a day in the life of an average defined user-
This is more like a literature review as I have used many recorded interviews from https://creakyjoints.org, https://www.youtube.com/, https://healthtalk.org/rheumatoid-arthritis, and so on of people sharing their experience on living with arthritis as reference for this data.
A closer look…..
After mapping out all this I have come up with multiple pain points and potential problem areas. But what interested me more is how people treated their everyday chores differently.
These “chores”, in therapy, are called “occupations”
And in occupational therapy, patients with joint pain or Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are trained to do things differently. In neutral postures scientifically* proven to cause minimum trauma to the joints and offer maximum torque.
***(Refer file: ///C:/Users/pc/Downloads/cdc_57870_DS1.pdf )
This means that if I develop anything further without considering their alternative lifestyle and way of doing such “occupations”, It would be completely redundant.
So, I met up with an occupational therapist and learned about how occupational therapy is linked to accessible design and the ergonomics behind it.
Most of the assistive design solutions built around this user niche consider avoiding “awkward postures”. They promote the use of “neutral postures” instead.
A neutral posture is achieved when the muscles are at their resting length and the joint is naturally aligned.
When a joint is not in its neutral posture, its muscles and tendons are either contracted or elongated. Joints in neutral postures have maximum control and force production. Neutral postures also minimize the stress applied to muscles, tendons, nerves, and bones. A posture is considered ―awkward when it moves away from the neutral posture toward the extremes in a range of motion.
The end result was this diagram which shows the recommended postures.
At this point, I had to narrow down my window again, to move forward… so, I mapped all the “occupations” I had broken down into a graph-based on complexity parameters.
From this graph, Ithough it would be best for the scope of this project to go ahead with smalle scale contexts, such as hand operated tasks such as door opening and writing, where the neutral position and torque matters for arthritis patients.
How Real People Helped Me Get A Reality Check To My Research
So, after reaching this far in research about how arthritis changes the way people do things in small ways, I looked into how posture correction or tweaking can be used to prevent painful joints, I looked into the various hand grips that people prefer and help in using products or doing tasks for a longer duration if time.
I went ahead and interviewed a few people suffering form rheumatoid arthritis, Juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and other forms of arthritis. This helped me crosscheck my findings so far and helped me stay relevant to real people.
For example, when I was doing my research work, I had an understanding that arthritis patients will have difficulties in using a bus for transportation due to the congested seat dimensions and the long rides where the patient is seated and cannot move their joints.
Only when I started thinking of this bus example with real people in front of me did I realise that there is a plethora of problems that are faced by these real people that I hadn’t initially considered.
For example, most women in India wear a saree to work, so stepping into the bus in a saree uing arthritic knees is a whole new dimension of difficult. Most people won’t get a seat to begin with. Let alone leg space or moving space. And they have to rely on the overhead handles for balance.
When the bus jerks to a stop, there is a huge trauma on your wrist if you are relying on these overhead handles. You will end up with heavy joint pain in your wrist, shoulder, back and knees by the time you get out of a busy Indian bus.
So, after this point. I realised it would be a good idea to keep everything contextual to real people around me living with this condition.
So, I decided to interview them.
The first person I interviewed was my neighbourhood store owner.
He has difficulty in everyday tasks like brushing, helping his wife in household chores, and packing shopping bags after billing. He uses a tall stool for bathing, where the bucket is elevates, making it less tedious to draw water. His store table counter space is also adaptive.
He keeps the cash in magnetic sweet boxes instead of using rubber bands to bundle them up. He uses knives to cut lays packets instead of scissors as it has proven to flareup his thumb. He loves wide candy jars as they give better torque, and is a broader grip. He uses an excel spread sheet instead of writing his accounts, although he prefers writing, whenever he is able to.
After I interviewed him, I learnt that he cared about his finances, and spend most of his personal care money on medicines and ayurvedic oils, and little on adaptive products. But he heavily relied on small but effective DIYs and tweaks that made things easier for him, like preferring the wide neck candy jars as they were easier to open.
When asked about investing in solutions to make him independent in many day to day areas, he replied that me would like to see something small scale and affordable that could make a difference in his workflow.
I found that to be a very interesting response as even I was working with the area “simple yet interesting” in the back of my head.
The reason behind his preference is that he is not a very tech savvy individual. And what has been happening to him is that every time he has had a problem in the past, he was forced to rely on computers or apps for solutions. This actually made him more dependent on his kids, and narrowed his independence.
I ultimately came to the conclusion that though it might be an unpopular opinion, having low tech or analogue solutions will make the majority of the ageing population (people before the .com boom) feel more independent.
For example, instead of a digital door lock for arthritis hands, many people actually prefer a better ergonomic lock system, or a key with better torque or wider grip.
This is because, we have to identify that even though it may not me the case in the future, technology (as in specifically electronic and digital goods) are an accessibility barrier for the vast analogous population in India.
Or in my interviewee Girish’s case, he prefers pen and paper while writing his accounts, but due to his condition, he uses his son’s help with the excel sheets instead.
When I realised this, I thought about how empathy is a key component in the design process and I just sat by myself thinking, why it took me so long to figure this out! But ultimately, I was happy to be here.
So I had to move on to the next interviews to get some diversity in people’s opinion.
Meena Nair 27
Diagnosed for Arthritis at 14.
She was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis and has been having medications ever since 9th grade in school. She used to avoid sports but her teachers always thought that she was bunking on purpose, and her diary notes were fake.
Her condition had caused her emotional distress in her past. She said that once people find out that she has arthritis, they automatically suggest swimming as a cure. “Do swimming! Its low impact!” and the pressure continued into her late teens.
Today, she works at Infosys, in Technopark, one of India’s biggest tech hubs. And now she has a different set of everyday problems to deal with, the biggest being her sedentary lifestyle.
Meena uses her coffee breaks as an opportunity to stretch out and relax her joints. Her office space is a typical cubicle and congested but she uses a support pillow to avoid strain.
She often feels like she is not able to give as many extra hours as her peers due to her condition. She fears that this will affect her career in the long run.
At home, she splurges on amazon bought products. She swears by this brand known as OXO, and grabs hold of their products whenever her sister comes back from the US.
They have a lot of ergonomically developed handles, spatulas, easily openable bottles, safe thermos flasks and so on, that has made her life so much easier. She strongly believes in the impact a well-made hand held product can make in her life.
She prefers broad handles and wide grips, as her fingers hurt when they have to curl around something during a flare. So, she uses her palms to grip instead, so width helps.
“Higher surface makes it easier on back and shoulders to work.”
“I can sit on and a slanted table to use the laptop, iron clothes and chop vegetables”
S.K Krishnapriya (52)
Former Kindergarten teacher(retired post pandemic)
diagnosed for RA at age 48
She is a very quiet woman who had worked with my mom in a kindergarten for many years. She finds it particularly difficult to grocery shop at a new place and she hesitates to ask the boys at the billing section to help her with the bags till the autorickshaw.
This was because she used to be judged to be a snobby woman for making them work, when in reality, it was her arthritis keeping her form being independent. She dislikes explaining this to people and just keeps to herself now.
When she used to teach, before the pandemic, she used to initially find it very difficult during flares as everything, from the children, the tables and chairs was at a very low height. She used to have times when she used to feel like her condition has cut her access to their world. But over time, she came up with smart solutions to work around her hurdles.
“Instead of bending or squatting to work with children, I have a wheeled stool I can sit on.”
She came up with pedestals, stools and even ditched her saree for better flexibility while handling young kids. She loved the jumbo crayons as it was much easier to hold!
So, after interviewing and understanding the perspectives of people with arthritis across generations, I found some similar trends in preferences and problems in context to accessibility.
Understanding the Quantitative Analytic Factors in the context of Arthritic Users.
I could now move into a niche where I could further develop.
That is when I came across the arthritis foundation, an organisation that promotes design inclusivity for arthritis.
They collaborated with the GeorgiaTech Lab to test products and issue an arthritis friendly certificate, that the product feature.
They are tested based on certain parameters in the lab, and then, by actual arthritis patients for feedback. They then go through a couple cycles pf prototyping and testing before they are finally approved for manufacture.
So I got a hold of that Checklist:
1. Requires less than 5lbs of linear force
2. Requires one handed action. (e.g.- lifting/carrying)
3. Requires less than 10lbs of rotational force.
4. Not requiring simultaneous actions. (e.g. pushing and then pulling)
This was a very interesting discovery for me because now, I had actual quantitative measurements to work with.
So moving ahead, I created my own chart to understand all the different factors that come into play at one glance before I move into ideation.
I was overwhelmed at this point so I took a step back and simply wrote down a list os tasks (activities) that I couold potentially work on.
•Showering
•Driving
•Brushing teeth
•Riding a bus
•Having a service dog
•Desk Job
•Gardening
•Doing laundry
•Packing lunch
- Making the bed
•Unboxing amazon delivery
- Ironing clothes
- Pouring hot beverages
- Opening doors
I really wanted to go for something ergonomically sound, considering the fact that neutral positions play such a big role in the lives of my user group.
I really believed that the ergo eyes factor, incorporated in one of these listed activities would be a perfect starting point.
So I started sketching some ideas
This sketch was my first idea. The basic concept was that the user can use these pan grippers with an immobile thumb, and minimal torque, as the work was done by the muscles at the base of the palm, avoiding any joints.
The next concept was a little more interesting for me because it involved toppling and equilibrium.
I had started considering factors such as dexterity and safetly at this point. Many kettles or water containers did not have much patience before its tipped off from its equilibrim point while pouring and starts to topple. In most cases, its the user’s hand strength that keeps the hot liquid from spilling. So I imagined what it would be like for athritis patients.
Strenuous? Painful? Risky?
I went back and forth between ideations for pan grippers and forms for electric kettles that are easy to pour for quite some time before I decided that I want to go forward with solutions for pouring hot beverages from an electric kettle with minimal dexterity and incorporating neutral positions, so that the design is inclusive for arthritic users.
So I started focusing on the elements first. Like spout design, handle ergonomics and the body and its relationship to equilibrium and toppling. my plan was to converge all of them after one point and then, make it visually aesthetc. But it wasnt as easy as I expected it to be. I faced many constrains because of my lack of resources during the pandemic but I tried to make work with what I have…especially for the mockups.
The Gömböc
This was an interesting shape that I came across and decided to try incorporate it to my process. The gömböc is a convex three-dimensional homogeneous body that when resting on a flat surface has just one stable and one unstable point of equilibrium. So it always come back to its resting postion. This was interesting as I was looking for forms that dont topple. or have one stable equilibrium point, so intheory, i thought this would be perfect.
So I began to experiment with the gomboc. I bought some air dry clay and tried to mould it. This one didnt work as I couldnt achieve enough precision. I then got my hands on some POP and started to carve out plaster from a cylinder I casted. This one, WORKED.
But when I physically had a Gömböc to work with, I realied many practical diffucluties with this form.
Even though, it always ame upright, it was after one 360 degree cartwheel, whicj would make it an impractical solution. This form also wobbles a lot, and that would make anyone anxious if you have some piping hot tea inside it. Also, i had to consider that water has its own intertia, so that would make it more unstable, regardless its magical Gömböcky properties. What i needed was something that would counteract the water’s inertia, not eccentuate it. So after a lot of drained hope and sadness, I bid farewell to the Gömböc.
I moved on to the next mechanism for self righting, topple proof froms. The Roly poly toy mechanism.
Even though it didnt sound as glamourous as a ~Gömböc ~ and didnt have a fancy mathematical orgin, it was a more reliable form, and was fundamentally much simpler to recreate. It just needed a low centre of mass for creating the stable equilibrium.
What i had planned to do is to combine the dead weight base and the metal convection dome at the base of the kettle into one. As its denser than water, it still works on a full kettle. It was a win-win.
Spout Design
I had two main concerns regarding spouts. One was surface tension causing spills, as illustrated in the image above, and the second was flow. So I decided to keep these things in mind moving ahead.
The Mockups
Because the form was very important in this design, I decided to use mockups as a way to look at feasibility and explored some forms. I had used air dry clay so I had to scale down a little bit, but I still got some direction out of it.
I really liked the ball and socket idea for the base plate and the kettle, But I had to think of a less bulky form, and something that’s easy to clean.
Having a lever shaped handle to push with the base of the palm would be an easy pour. Especially if it falls back self righting itself to place.
With all these things in mind, I went back to my sketchbook and tried to fit all this into one small package.
Sketches
The process of trying to find the perfect form that worked and fit intomy AEIOU looked like a labrnyth by the time I was done.
But it was a really interesting journey
This was my first ideation, but it had a lot of problems. So, I made some changes.
I was happier with the aesthetic in this rendering, though it is just a very raw idea, but then again, I had to iterate due to some practical diffuculties.
The handle was too organic for the form too, it just didnt seem to fit in. the more i stared at it, the worse it got. And I wasnt happy with how the lid would function either
Everything seemed okay at first glance, but I still had more tweaks to make. Or I’d struggle in the practical applications part of it all.
I sketched quite a few different versions and rendered it in 3D to see how it would actually feel to have around the houe, as a form, and also as something you want to hold. Some were tacky, some were too edgy and some just didnt fit with the environment or the user’s needs. I ended up narrowing down to these two models.
I finally decided to go with the second handle, as it gave better attention to the weak joints.
The Base Plate
The electrical components of an electric kettle include the heating element, a thermostat, which turns off the kettle automatically when finished boiling, a wire linking the element to the cord, and the plug.
For kettles with a base unit, this base container provides power to the heating element.
I thought I’d go with the base plate. The powe supply needed to be something delicate and accesebile, so I chose a USB port instead of the bulky plug and and that diffuculty.
For the form of the base plate, I wanted to keep it simple and light weight, but also a little flexible for the kettle to rest on. The perfect macth for these needs seemed to the the donut shape.
I explored many different finishes and played around with my CAD model a little bit.
The handle has a huge push button, wide enough to push with the palm. its for ejecting the lid with a simple latch release mechanism.
Manufacturing and Materials
This is just an outline of how I think this kettle could be manufactured.
For top-quality kettles, high-grade steel is commonly used for the inner structure. In fact, high-grade steel is the most common material used for creating the outer shell of a kettle. The shell is created by using a punch press to cut steel sheets and create steel stampings.
This steel is also used to create a solid base that houses the electrical components. Sheets of steel are mechanically placed in the die of a punch press. A hydraulic punch is released, creating a hollow shell in the shape of the kettle base. This piece is then removed. The second sheet of steel is placed in a punch press with a die shaped to hold the heating element. The steel shapes are called stampings. One piece forms the base of the kettle and the connector between the element and the cord. The second piece sits in the first like one bowl inside the other.
Anodizing: The base stamping is conveyed to a paint booth where it is given a small electrical charge that attracts fine a paint mist to its surface. The Die cut and shaped handle is weilded in place. The housings are allowed to cool until assemblers can handle them. The painted and treated metal stampings are welded together to form the base of the kettle. The glass lid is cast and cooled ectremely quickly in cold water. It is cut in shape using hydraulic glass cutting machine, its joined in place with the silicon ribbon band.
Many heating elements inside tea kettles are comprised of Nichrome, 80% nickel and 20% chromium, wire, ribbon or strip. Nichrome benefits from having a relatively high resistance, and therefore is an ideal material for heating water.
According to Kettle Heating Element:
This oxide coating prevents the wire inside the application from burning away or breaking. In most heating elements, the element is well insulated and fully embedded into an outer copper housing which is chrome plated to help delay corrosion from the water surrounding it, which is heated by the element.
The kettle base is placed on an assembly line conveyor belt, then equipped with power components at a workstation where the electrical set is removed from its packaging, and an assembly worker manually sets the connector between the heating element and the cord into the shaped opening in the base. The kettle’s rubber feet are also attached to the base plate. The metal base (with its electrical components in place).
The convection
The CMF
Lid Closure Mechanism
What The Self Righting Mechanism Looks Like
Lets boil some tea!
