video

Joseph Cybul

The Brief

Sam Daitzman
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    Many children with Cerebral Palsy, a physical impairment, also have other difficulties, such as visual impairment. Many with visual troubles are incredibly sensitive towards objects touching their face. We have designed the Petal Crown with a specific person in mind, a young girl named Eleanor, who has both of these impairments: it is a headdress used to desensitize her face from foreign objects and build her fine motor skills. That being said, Petal Crown could be used by any child working with an occupational therapist to acclimate to facial proximity and/or practice fine motor skills.

    We used 3D printed pieces to hold wire arms to a wooden bent circular base. The wires are connected by a different 3D printed piece which holds plexiglas pieces to the arms. Eleanor puts these plexiglas “gems” into the 3D printed holders, giving her practice with detailed movements. To have practice with objects coming near her face, she could reach up and grab one of these wire arms and bring it near her eyes to put the gems in.

    Using the headpiece, Eleanor will be able to connect with other children who are not visually or physically impaired much more easily because she will have more accurate movements and will be desesitized to movements close to her face; this will lead to less frustration and more joy.

Process

Sam Daitzman

The Brief

Nicholas Grassi

    Many children with Cerebral Palsy, a physical impairment, also have other difficulties, such as visual impairment. Many with visual troubles are incredibly sensitive towards objects touching their face. We have designed the Petal Crown for a specific person, Eleanor, who has both of these impairments: it is a headdress used to desensitize her face from foreign objects and build her fine motor skills.

    We used 3D printed pieces to hold wire arms to a wooden bent circular base. The wires are connected by a different 3D printed piece which holds plexiglas pieces to the arms. Eleanor puts these plexiglas “gems” into the 3D printed holders, giving her practice with detailed movements. To have practice with objects coming near her face, she could reach up and grab one of these wire arms and bring it near her eyes to put the gems in.

    Using the headpiece, Eleanor will be able to connect with other children who are not visually or physically impaired much more easily because she will have more accurate movements and will be desesitized to movements close to her face; this will lead to less frustration and more joy.

Eye See You

Noah Alperin and Sam Tull

Process post

Ariana DeFranc and Alana Press

 

 

The Brief

Ariana DeFranc and Alana Press

At Perkins school for the blind, eye prosthetics are not uncommon amongst the students. While they are usually comfortable and easy to use, it can be difficult for some to become accustom to them.

We met Eleanor, a student at Perkins, who will need to use an eye prosthetic soon. One of the challenges Eleanor will face because of her new prosthetic is the sensation of an object coming in contact with her face, especially when controlled by another person. It is likely that someone else will assist Eleanor with the placement of her prosthetic because her fine motor skills are affected by her Cerebral Palsy.

We knew we wanted to design a fun way for Eleanor to practice letting someone put an object in contact with her face. One of Eleanor's favorite toys is a horse named Horse, which inspired us to make a giraffe named Giraffe. We decided to make a giraffe because we wanted our design to be fun and familiar to Eleanor so that she would look forward to using it. The Giraffe works with a manual control that resembles the motion of scissors so that it is easy for Eleanor or someone else to use. A curved scissor lift is controlled by Eleanor or someone else to move the head of the giraffe towards her face. We hope that practice with the Giraffe Named Giraffe will help Eleanor become comfortable with her eye prosthetic.

The Brief

Grace Cassels

We created a toy that helps children develop fine motor skills. Similar to the way that many people insert contacts, our toy is specifically tailored to hone skills for holding open an eye to insert a prosthetic eye. It also familiarizes children with vocabulary for the different parts of their faces in order to help them feel more comfortable and understand what is going on during doctor visits. Many children at Perkins School for the Blind have some form of cerebral palsy, a neurological disorder that affects muscle control and fine/gross motor movements. Some of those children have also lost an eye and have an ocular implant and an ocular prosthesis. Our goal was to help those children learn to care for their prosthetic eyes when they have to take them out to clean them. After doing some research on toys to help children develop fine motor skills, we decided to make a toy bunny with the objective of holding open the eyelid and putting the eyes in correctly. We wanted our toy to have varying levels of difficulty, so we put the bunny on a stand with 3 different angles. The less obtuse the angle, the harder it is to put in the eyes. The bunny also wears glasses, much like many of the children from Perkins, so the final level of difficulty is to put the bunny's glasses on the child and have then practice the motion in their own eye. In addition, those children will have many doctors' appointments where they should know what is going on, so we added touch sensors to different parts of the face that upon touch, will say what part of the face it is. We used a wide variety of materials and methods in making the bunny, ranging from wood to 3D printed parts to an Arduino.

Process

Drew Siegal and Richard Lourie

Children who are missing eyes need to put Prosthetics in. This can be a very scary process, most of them don't feel comfortable letting someone touch their face, let alone their eye. We wanted to help children become more comfortable with things going near their eyes. Our project is a pair of fake glasses that kids can practice on. They will put their face near the glasses and put a ball through the whole. One of our precedents is a marble run, we wanted to make it fun, and while we were at Perkins we saw some marble runs that looked cool. Another precedent is a pair of glasses, because we wanted the project to feel familiar. Our design is a headrest that has a pair of glasses when someone puts a ball through it goes down a marble run. We wanted to make it fun. We started out in cardboard, and designed the run. Then we measured it, and designed it in wood. The ramps have notches in them to help them fit together. After we were finished, we spray painted everything. If we had more time we would make the ramps have bells on them so that it would make fun noises.

The Brief

Drew Siegal and Richard Lourie