Master's Projects

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Master's Projects

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 14

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

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 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.
Easing Transitions: Service Design for Older Adults

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 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.
Smart Cooking Tools: A Study of the Design & Development of Sensor-Based, Internet-Connected Devices for Cooking

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 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.
Design of Backpacking Tent Accessories through the Lens of Wilderness Medicine

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 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.
A Framework for Cross-cultural Product Design

(Georgia Institute of Technology, 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.