July 2019-June 2021
Professional Group Project.

Role: User researcher, Mechanical Design and Manufacturing, Industrial Design.

Easy Chair or the Stand-at-Ease Chair is an assistive chair which aids elderly to perform routine action of sitting and rising from the chair with much less effort. The chair has a novel compliant hinge mechanism (which behaves like a non-linear torsion spring) which assists elderly while getting up thus reducing muscle effort and knee pain.

Most of the work is confidential and I cannot share all the details here. But I am always up for a chat!

Project Sponsors and Stakeholders

I was simultaneously working on Stand-at-Ease chair in M2D2 lab and a start up Neu Integrals Med Tech, where we are working to get the product in the market.

M2D2 lab (July 2019 – June 2021)

Responsiblities

• Conducting user testing with geriatricians and elderly clinical patients.
• Conduct Experiments to generate quantitative data to validate assistance provided by chair. Me and my colleague have developed an experimental setup consisting of EMG(Electromyography), force plate and motion capture system to quantify reduction in thigh muscle activation(contraction) and knee torque from experiments.
• Developed protocol for customization of chair torque-angle curves for any individual.

NEU Integrals Med Tech (Jan 2020 – June 2021)

Responsibilities as Product Design Engineer

• Mechanical Design of a mechanism to automatically shift the cam profiles after completion of the egress and ingress motion performed by the user.
• Also, as the chair is transitioning from a proof of concept in a lab environment to be sold as a commercial product in the market, we did a lot of iterations of the compliant hinge mechanism to reduce cost, manufacturing time and processes.
• Work on Design for Manufacturing and Assembly analysis of the mechanism, BOM Preparation, preparing manufacturing drawings, etc to streamline manufacturing and reduce manufacturing cost, reduce number of manufacturing process involved and reduce assembly time.

I am also responsible for quality analysis of chair for which we are building a rig to test chairs. Along with a colleague we did user interviews and observed clinical patient’s behaviour with the chair to align UX and ID.