INDN 211: Identifying Resultant Problem aaaaaand Sketching Bonanza!

So, with a persona nailed down to the plywood of my project, refining the project itself down to a workable, exciting form was going to be a hard task. One of the elements that I've decided is going to be tricky for this project is the fact that I want my project to be reasonably attractive aesthetically.

Creating a piece that should be extremely functional as well as pretty isn't going to be the easiest of tasks, but  it should definitely be within the realms of possibility. The idea is to create something that really supports the users efforts to re-acquire their skill, while doing that task very discreetly and conscientiously.

One of the most important elements of learning to write is to understand and control how to hold the pen. Now, after a stroke or severe injury, this muscle memory can be very difficult to re-acquire. A lot of pens have rubber grips on them nowadays, however, none of these pens really support the finger beyond the surface friction of the rubber band.

What I want to create is something that gives true support for the fingers and encourages the muscles to retain the memory of the placement of the fingers.

An idea that came to me while talking to my tutor was that rather than making a single supportive pen, what might be best would be a rehabilitative "kit" of sorts, where the user starts off with the easiest pen grip, graduating up the levels of pen, until the final level is essentially almost the same difficulty as a normal pen, encouraging the user to "graduate" to a real pen.

This idea of a complete process is far superior and could be vastly expanded on to create an isolated kit.

One of the things that I realised is that the pen isn't something that will fit everyone. People's hand sizes are different, as well as there being a problem of right-handed versus left-handed people. As a result, I really needed to choose a specific persona and then stick with that persona.

This design isn't one that will suit everyone. For it to be usable, there would have to be a complete, different set. Possibly a Small, Medium, and Large for right handed people, and then a Small, Medium, and Large for left-handed people. 6 different sets wouldn't be an outrageous production, but for this project I'll focus on just the one.

Now that the project and persona are refined, I can start making some models and mock-ups of the form. This process will help me refine the design significantly, and will reveal aspects of it that I hadn't considered before.

Sebastien out.