Stable
STABLE is a set of four wheels that can retrofit onto any walker or rollator to provide enhanced safety features. STABLE implements breaks to prevent sudden jerking forward movement when sudden acceleration is detected and provides support when you stand up by engaging auto-locking.
The website for our final product, STABLE, can be viewed here.
Our team, Lily, presenting to our panel at the first design review.
How we began
The design challenge for the winter 2018 semester was to "design a product suitable for use by senior adults, incorporating the use of active technology, to improve health maintenance and outcomes". The design constraints included staying under a retail price of $200, hitting the target demographics, working active technology, manufacturability, and a competitive advantage.
The 14 week course started with a fuzzy front end (interviews & observations, ideation, and concept generation), to the technical development (prototyping, conjoint analysis, realization & refinement, process selection, and planning), and ended with the product launch (positioning, forecasting & pricing, stocking, promotion plan, and web & physical trade shows).
Process
Our team started by gaining context and learning about the lives of senior adults. We used techniques such as secondary research, conducting interviews, and surveys. This allowed us to gain empathy and identify pain points. Our next step was to create "How Might We..." statements and launch into our ideation phase. We generated 100+ ideas, then did multiple anonymous team votes in order to choose five ideas to present in design review 1 (DR1).
For DR1, we presented a our research, ideation, three personas, and five product ideas that connected with different personas. After presenting and receiving feedback, we ran concept testing to gain feedback from possible users about how they felt about our products. With this feedback and continued research, we decided on the two final ideas we would present for DR2.
After DR2, we decided on one product: a walker with enhanced safety features. Our team ran conjoint testing and created prototypes, ran a reverse brainstorming process where we identify 100 problems wrong with our process, conducted research on how to make our active technology, and did costing. We presented our work at DR3 and finalized our product: wheels with enhanced safety features that could be retrofitting onto any walker.
A photo of Team Lily after DR2.
An image of what our final looks-like and works-like product would look like after mass manufacturing.
results
STABLE was launched at the end of the semester for a price of $49. While we lost time reinventing the walker, we gain invaluable experience. Our product sold out in the online trade show and was very popular during the in-person trade show. We received feedback from customers such as, "I want this product now... I know people who need this now".