Process

Sam Bortman and Joey Raskin-Lantos
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We began with the challenge of making a piece of clothing or a wearable for families with children who struggle with CP face on a daily basis. We focused on the problem of lifting an immobile person out of their wheelchair and moving them to another location while erasing the stigma associated with "lift vests" and adaptable clothing. Thus, we took our original vest and began researching further about various lift vests and key areas on the body where support is needed when lifting a patient. Next, we met with a family who told us where they would need straps on a lift vest in order to facilitate the movements of their children. We began designing new vest sketches that kept the idea of vertical and woven fabric designs while intergrating horizontal straps as well. After multiple sketches, we turned to duct tape and plastic caution tape to construct various prototypes of each sketch and further our ideas. Our group ended up playing with the material until we found a woven pattern that we found was most creative and effective in one piece. Consequientially, we decided to redesign the idea of having adjustable straps and instead went for buckles that would clip along one side to secure the vest on to a small, medium, or large size. Our process was essentially an experiment of trial and error as we tried to keep all new and key straps of nylon (or rather duct tape) as integrated to our concept as possible.