Design a device to help Joel drinking independently!
Image description: A young brown-haired man in a red jumper and a colorful scarf, sits in his wheelchair and laughs.
About Joel
Joel is a joyful young man with cerebral palsy. He lives in Schaffhausen and likes to spend time in front of the PC: gaming, Youtube and designing graphics himself in the studio are just some of his favorite activities.
Challenge
To be able to drink something, Joel is always dependent on external help. After lowering the wheelchair, he takes liquids in a lying position. Until now, the bottle has always had to be held by someone. The goal of this challenge is to build a device or an aid that allows Joel to enjoy his favorite drinks (coffee or ice tea) without external help.
Solution
Throughout the weekend the "hackers" developed several prototypes and went through many iterations to find the perfect, independent drinking system for Joel. Starting with a very primitive system where a tube attached to a bottle lets water flow into Joel’s mouth, it became quickly clear, that a dosage system is required to drink safely. Perfoming a quick usability study with various mouth pieces showed that the device also has to be intuitive to use. Different biocompatible flow systems and dosage methods (using electrical motors or soap dispensers) were built, tried and evaluated.
At the end Joel got a working system he could take home: a water dispenser (usually used for watering plants) was modified to contain a big lever arm and a tube leading to Joel’s mouth. Upon pressing the lever, a restricted amount of water flows through the tube to drink. Even tough the system can not be used completely independently (some pumping of the bottle by a caregiver is needed before the system works and supervision still is recommended) the self-created water dispenser can provide fun and some autonomy.