Master's Projects

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Master's Projects

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 19

Exploring the Challenges and Designing Potential Solutions for Insulin Pump Technologies

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-07-31) Harper, Andy

This study examines the current technology of diabetes management devices, primarily insulin pumps. Insulin pumps are effective tools for the precise control of glucose levels, for type 1 diabetes (T1D) patients. Many design and usability challenges still exist with insulin pump technologies. In this study, we investigated current shortcomings and limitations of insulin pumps through survey and interview data collection methods. Our findings revealed issues with current insulin pumps including: 1) wear-ability and accessibility in public 2) operating devices while performing demanding tasks 3) interruptions with social activities and interactions 4) continuity of maintenance, and 5) interface operations. Using the data from our investigative work, we produced design criteria to develop a novel wrist-worn interface and separate pump design for a closed loop artificial pancreas system. We then evaluated the design through seven remote usability testing sessions with insulin pump users. Our study aspires to inform the future design of novel insulin pumps that enable people with T1D to maintain better control of their glucose levels through consistent and steady interactions with these tools during their everyday activities.
Interaction Design and Product Design of IoT Kitchen Central Hub for North American Market

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-07) Lu, Xinyang

Kitchen is an essential place in our home for food preparation, cooking and having fun activities. According to the market research report from Grand View Research (2015), the global smart kitchen appliances market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 25% from 2015 to 2022. North America is expected to hold major share in the smart kitchen appliances market. The future of small kitchen appliances is built upon new technologies, and it needs to fit in people’s lifestyles. Based on some initial research, a few future trends were identified, including connection, health cooking, sensing and computing, and interaction. Connection is based on the high-speed development of IoT (Internet of Things). Platform and products embedded and connected with IoT enable the users to control and monitor the household appliances through mobile and digital applications. In addition, these IoT kitchen appliances allow users to improve eating habits, with the help of an abundance of healthy recipes. New cooking methods such as Pressure-cooking and Sous-vide prove to be healthier compared to traditional cooking methods. Sensing and interactive allow users to control their cooking processes with accuracy and thoroughness. With these future trends and an increasingly growing market, there’s a great potential of design opportunities in this market. This research includes the product design and the interactive prototype of the kitchen central hub. It also includes several rounds of comprehensive user research and user testing. The outcomes of this research prove the promising future of IoT kitchen central hub for North American market. Possibility of further improvement is discussed in this end.
Exploring modularity in physical therapy: The development of a novel modular recovery tool

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020) Anderson, Christina W.

The aim of this project was to answer the question: Is modularity valuable in a physical therapy setting? Physical therapy happens in a myriad of ways. Numerous tools, interventions, and methods exist to improve health and well-being. Instead of drugs or surgery, physical therapy aims to improve the health of an individual through methods such as manual therapy, functional training, functional control, exercise regimens, etc. The utilization of multiple tools, interventions, and methods creates a variety of different prescriptive avenues for any person to take. Exploring these aspects, this research set out to enhance and customize an aspect of the physical therapy experience with a novel design. Through ethnographic research and semi-structured interviews, the role of modularity in the physical therapy recovery setting was evaluated. The insights provided by the interviews and observations yielded findings which indicated there was indeed value in modularity within the physical therapy recovery space. This project presents a novel modular recovery tool system comprised of several parts which can be customized in countless ways.
Examining Virtual Reality As An Empathizing Tool For Early Ideation Stage in Design

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020) Velasquez, Alex C.

Whenever there is a new design project to undertake, one of the first and most important steps is to empathize and immerse oneself into the design brief early in the design process in order to gain a better understanding of the problem space and be able to create concepts that accurately target the design context. Some of the traditional tools employed by industrial designers include; sketching, storytelling, journey/mind mapping, persona exploration, post-it note brainstorming, role-playing and field observation. However, some of these tools in the early stages of the design process rely heavily on the designer's imagination, assumption or prior knowledge of the design context which could be flawed, inaccurate or not current. Other methods such as field observation or traditional research requires effort and time and as far as field observation goes, certain elements, behaviours or other factors may not be replicated or duplicated easily for further and thorough examination. This project aims to investigate immersive Virtual Reality as an effective tool for the early design stage compared to traditional industrial design methods. Leveraging by off-the-shelf technology, it is easy to film 360 degree videos in the context of Virtual Reality, which can capture an immersive scenario that can be replayed and reviewed by designers in order to discover problem spaces/design opportunities with empathizing the problem space. This project examined a group of participants in order to conduct a simple design challenge involving designing an external visual communication system for autonomous shuttles in the pick-up phase of shuttle riding. One team will use virtual reality to empathize with the context while the second team will use traditional methods of empathizing. The design methods as well as the designs themselves are evaluated by the participants and a third panel body including experts in industry and the general masters of industrial design student body and the evaluation scores are measured to compare the effectiveness of both virtual reality and traditional methods. Findings reveal that while traditional industrial design empathizing tools are more effective in some areas compared to Virtual Reality, V.R. was able to perform as a usable system for empathizing and offers vast potential as am empathizing tool in other more challenging design scenarios.
CycSight: Designing a Haptic Wristband With a Detachable Radar to Improve Hearing-Impaired Cyclists' Road Safety

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020) Liao, Siran

The hearing-impaired group is a very important part of our society. According to WHO, over 5% of our populations have disabling hearing loss. To those people who love cycling, the loss of hearing makes them more exposed to unexpected danger. However, there are few designers notice this growing vulnerable group. It barely has any products on the market designed for improving hearing-impaired cyclists’ road safety. And during our research process, I didn’t find many projects to investigate these people’s needs. This project is focusing on improving road safety for deaf cyclists. By conducting user research and user-centered design, I draw solid design criteria and designed a haptic wristband with a detachable radar detector to provide rear-end traffic to users. Our project is just a start, I hope it can eventually raise the public’s attention to the hearing-impaired group.
Temperature Controlled Transport of Vaccines by Drone In Developing Countries

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-05) Blount, Wendy

According to the World Health Organization, vaccines must be transported within a temperature window of 2C to 8C. Much of the world's population does not have access to all season roads. Mountainous regions and regions experiencing violent conflict present challenges to vaccine delivery. Delivering vaccines by drone circumvents many of these problems. The typical drone can carry a 2kg payload. The current method for cooling vaccines is by conditioned ice pack. However, conditioned ice packs are heavy and consume approximately 1/3 or more of the drone's limited payload capacity. This project focuses on developing a more efficient way to keep vaccines cool within a drone's small payload, during transport between facilities regional healthcare facilities and smaller local facilities. The container will need to be packed by a regional worker at the origination point and unpacked by a local worker at the other end. The container needs to be easy to open and close. It needs to be easy to load. It cannot exceed a specific weight and cannot exceed a specific temperature window. Methods researched include redeveloping the ice packs and using simple insulation to finally develop a container that maintains a specific temperature range during transport more efficiently than current conditioned ice packs.
Community by Design

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-07) Carpenter, Michael

Principles of community based participatory research (CBPR) were applied in the field of design to create an avenue to encourage and allow more community input in the design process. Communities are diverse, each with their own unique characteristics; therefore, it is important to work with members and local organizations to understand the background, history, and dynamics that define the community. Current CBPR methods allow member’s input in the design process but aren’t geared towards creating design solutions. This project focuses on creating an approach that merges CBPR and user centered design principles. The outcome is the creation of K.I.N.D. (Knowledge, Immersion, Need, Design), a self designed toolkit used to connect and unify diverse groups of community members to learn about current needs and identify a design-oriented solution. To test this toolkit, the K.I.N.D methodology was applied to local community. Through the application of K.I.N.D, members of the local community became actively engaged in developing a tangible solution. The results showcase a branding strategy to strengthen the identity of the community as well as a plan for identifying assets within the community and stimulating economic growth
Community by Design

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014) Carpenter, Michael

Principles of community based participatory research (CBPR) were applied in the field of design to create an avenue to encourage and allow more community input in the design process. Communities are diverse, each with their own unique characteristics; therefore, it is important to work with members and local organizations to understand the background, history, and dynamics that define the community. Current CBPR methods allow member’s input in the design process but aren’t geared towards creating design solutions. This project focuses on creating an approach that merges CBPR and user centered design principles. The outcome is the creation of K.I.N.D. (Knowledge, Immer - sion, Need, Design), a self designed toolkit used to connect and unify diverse groups of community members to learn about current needs and identify a design-oriented solution. To test this toolkit, the K.I.N.D methodology was applied to local community. Through the appli - cation of K.I.N.D, members of the local community became actively engaged in developing a tangible solution. The results showcase a branding strategy to strengthen the identity of the community as well as a plan for identifying assets within the community and stimulating economic growth.
Microwave Oven Concept Design for Older Adults

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014) Lin, Xuejiao

Microwave ovens can be used to perform varied cooking and food preparation related tasks with greater efficiency and convenience than traditional cooktops and ovens. Microwave ovens have been highly adopted by older adults in the past 40 years, especially those living in small spaces such as retirement communities. As industry develops microwave ovens with more and advanced functions, it poses a challenging usability factor for older adults in regards to complexity of use. Furthermore, older adult’s abilities may decline with age, adding an additional factor for operating microwaves. The purpose of the project is to not only understand older adult’s current usability factors of microwave ovens, but also develop an improved microwave oven design for older adults. This project will discuss research results including surveys, space assessment, market reviews and usability testing of microwave ovens as well as the process for designing microwave ovens for older adults living in retirement communities. The significance of this project is to design products that are better suited for older adults’ needs in relationship of adoption and usability of everyday technologies.
Project [viaStation]: Empowering New User Access to Bike-Shares in Smaller Markets

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 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.