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Master's Projects

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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Project [viaStation]: Empowering New User Access to Bike-Shares in Smaller Markets

2013 , Ansah-Kofi, Paanii

In November of 2011, Georgia Tech welcomed its first automated bike-sharing service. Since then the founders at viaCycle have continued to expand and improve their platform. However, after opting against on-site kiosks due to their low cost, low infrastructure approach, it has been difficult to accelerate new-user adoption and readily assess its scalable impacts. This project intends to eliminate that particular barrier by proposing an alternative kiosk system that utilizes a minimal amount of infrastructure while potentially transforming the platform’s accessibility and service design. The success of such an intervention could help pave the way for a new era in bike sharing where the ability to implement modern systems in smaller, yet needy markets is a viable reality. The major collaborators in the project were viaCycle, Georgia Tech’s Parking & Transportation office, and campus transit awareness groups. The primary research included readings on the state of art, case studies, several stakeholder interviews and participatory evaluations. Currently it is well understood that, for the context of Georgia Tech, the solution needs to be relatively cost effective in terms of parts and implementation. That said, it remains to be seen what transportation niche viaCycle and the university would like the service to fill in particular; this has many implications for the incorporation of possible ‘viaStations’. Second, it is important to better understand how to impact the perception of bike sharing, whether having a centralized access channel/structure versus a dispersion of ‘channels’. To approach these there is a need to identify the most prominent themes and heuristics, which will also go far in leading successful concept implementations.

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Easing Transitions: Service Design for Older Adults

2013 , Salisbury, Laura

The transition into a retirement community for older adults can be a time of great stress, leading to social isolation, loneliness and loss of meaning. To reduce this stress associated with the transition process, a feeling of control is necessary to facilitate openness to new environments and socialization. Through the use of ethnographic research methods such as environmental observation and participant interviews, three themes, ‘Feeling of Value’, ‘Deep Connections’ and ‘Feeling at Home’, were uncovered that defined meaning for residents in the community. A concept that satisfies these themes was then developed through the use of codesign methods and iterative feedback with residents and experts. The purpose of this project is to research and understand how meaning is defined by residents and develop a service that facilitates easy adoption and transition into the retirement community.

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PiKo+ : Promoting adherence to daily PEFR measurement by college students with asthma

2012 , Kudtarkar, Durga

Description of the development of a keychain size device for detecting peak expiratory flow for assessing and monitoring asthma severity and asthma control.

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Bicycle Commuting: Design of a Device to Increase Female Ridership in Atlanta Using V2V Technology

2012 , Hwang, Allison

Statistics indicate that there is a significant discrepancy between the amount of males and the amount of females who choose to commute by bicycle to work. Of all bicycle-commuting trips to work within Atlanta, 78% of all trips are made by men and 22% are made by women. This is on par with the national statistic of men outnumbering female bicycle commuters 3 to 1. Previous studies have shown that female cyclists are more sensitive to dangers than male cyclists. This project looks into the underlying concerns of female cyclists and seeks to allay fear in riding in the city. The result is Bicyclist Awareness System (BAS), a system of components designed, utilizing vehicle-to vehicle technology (V2V), to create a relationship between drivers and nearby cyclists.

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Howtorecycle.it: Designing a System to Empower Consumers to Become More Involved in the End-of-Life of Commodity-Grade Appliances

2013 , Audy, Stephen

The United States currently recycles only 34% of the municipal waste that it produces, with some materials such as plastics having only a 7.6% rate of recycling (EPA 2011). Two contributors to low recycling rates are lack of information and confusion among consumers (Earth911 2012). Also, recycling materials from many designed-fordisassembly products may require multiple steps, special procedures, special tools, or special facilities (Boothroyd and Alting 1992). Current systems available for product labeling, and information barely scratch the surface when it comes to providing adequate information and involving consumers. While simultaneously, commodity-grade appliances—due to the lack of design considerations for their end-of-life—provide ample opportunity for increasing recyclability. Therefore, the purpose of this project is to design a system to empower consumers to become more involved in the end-of-life of their commoditygrade appliances. The objectives of this project were accomplished through the development of a three-part system. The system is comprised of improved product labeling, an information source in the form of a website, and a redesigned commodity-grade coffee maker aimed at consumer disassembly.

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Design of Backpacking Tent Accessories through the Lens of Wilderness Medicine

2012 , Baranak, Andrew Stephen

Wilderness medicine is a practice that focuses on medical incidents such as the cuts, stings, sprains, and bruises can happen at any time when participating in outdoor recreation. While these medical events would often be minor concerns in day-to-day life, they can quickly escalate to very serious situations when out in the wilderness, hence the need for a unique field of medicine. These potential complications are due to the remote nature of these trips – meaning injuries stay untreated longer - and the increased presence of bacteria and viruses, especially when dealing with a cut or laceration. Often times in the wilderness, these medical situations need to be dealt with in a very improvised manner and few pieces of gear are designed specifically for this, meaning that any available supplies or equipment may need to be repurposed. Furthermore, there is a good chance that if a wilderness medical situation occurs, that the individual will have reduced physical abilities in some way, shape, or form. With this knowledge in hand, a thought experiment was devised: what can be learned about tents and tent usage if examined from a non-traditional perspective, such as that of wilderness medicine? Wilderness medicine provides a very interesting and complex “lens” to examine tents through because most of the time it addresses worst-case scenarios – the outliers. Similar to Universal Design, if designs are focused more on these outlying medical situations – things that can result in reduced mobility, strength, and awareness, to name a few – then it follows that accommodation could be improved for all other users. More so, the possibility even exists that the tent, or aspects of the tent, could actually play an active role in addressing wilderness medical scenarios. The goal of this project is just that, to first examine tents and all of the intangibles associated with them through this “lens” of wilderness medicine. Once completed, the second phase is to examine the information gathered and apply this knowledge to the creation of new products or components related to current tent technology. The ideal outcome is a new tent whose refinements and innovations improve a tent’s usability in a wide variety of situations.

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Design & Technologies for Facilitating Events in Retirement Communities

2012 , Palacio, Jorge

Great opportunity lies in designing products for the elderly due to the fact that the users, the people users interact with, and their environments cause problems which could be solved with design that is tailored to their needs. Advancements in technology have introduced new ways to address event planning solutions. Unfortunately, incorporating technology is not a simple task because the current technology has not been developed with elders in mind. Therefore, this project focuses on resolving the technology gap with the users by using design as a way to make the technology more accessible to seniors, and explores how technology can increase awareness and attendance of planned events.

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Smart Cooking Tools: A Study of the Design & Development of Sensor-Based, Internet-Connected Devices for Cooking

2013 , Schuster, James

For the past 50 years, appliance design has been chasing efficiency. For more and more consumers, cooking has gone from a chore to a pleasure. Consumers now yearn for kitchen products that enhance the joy and camaraderie of cooking. We are at a point of change in the appliance industry. Ubiquitous computing—a technology model where computers recede into the background of everyday life by being integrated into everyday objects—has begun to appear in household products like thermostats and bathroom scales. The culture around a product has also begun to drive innovation in the consumer products industry. Product design methods are shifting away from siloed approaches—where researchers, designers, and engineers do not collaborate often—towards design methods where many stakeholders work together to define all parts of how a product is designed. The purpose of this project is to bridge ubiquitous computing, domestic culture, and cross-discipline design methods in order to design, develop, and test concepts for future cooking tools. Using user input to drive concepts generated by a multidisciplinary team, this study hopes to design better, more useful, usable and desirable cooking tools.

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A Framework for Cross-cultural Product Design

2012 , Rubin, Zachary L.

In the modern globalized marketplace, industrial designers and consumer product companies are being challenged with cross-cultural design situations. While designers have the tools and instinct to produce culturally relevant designs, budgets and schedules inhibit the cultural immersion required to fully understand a foreign culture. This project investigates design as a cultural phenomenon and outlines a new framework that defines “culture,” in terms of industrial design. It aggregates research results from case studies and professional insight to provide Cultural Design methods that allow designers to efficiently extract valuable cultural elements. This framework informs the design process with cultural insights and helps develop products rich in cultural values that address local needs.

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A Process to Apply Hardwood Pallets as Viable Raw Material for Furniture Making

2012 , Blake, Patrick A.

Considering the abundance of wood pallets in today’s manufacturing and distribution system, the reckless disposal of pallets calls for a sustainable disposal solution to better utilize the pallets and conserve resources. For example, only 10 percent of wood pallets are recycled and one quarter of all wood in landfills is from pallets. This project examines the use of wooden pallets in furniture making since the furniture industry has seen an increase in hardwood prices and a decrease in the quality due to hardwood shortage. The outcome of this project is a process book that documents collection, transformation and use of pallet wood to construct furniture and offer a sustainable solution for pallet disposal. The book serves as a guide in utilizing processes and using the tools needed to obtain furniture grade wood from pallets for furniture making. While there may be other ways to address pallet disposal or furniture wood scarcity, this process book provides a sustainable solution making good use of discarded pallets.

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