Handibrush
Our innovative toothbrush design is tailored for elderly individuals with mobility issues. It features a long, flexible head, a large textured handle for easy gripping, and interchangeable bristles, enhancing usability and comfort for daily dental care.
Time/Year: Fall 2022
Where: New York University Shanghai
This was a group project with my classmates Erin Smith and Ken Wu in the class Industrial Design in Action.
Individual Contributions:
- Research
- Ideation discussions
- Prototyping and sketching
- Fusion 360 and 3D printing of every piece
- Rendering of final model for poster
Problem: How might we design a toothbrush that is going to clean teeth comfortably for elderly people that face sensitivity in their mouths and disabilities in the hand?
Toothbrushes are universally used by everyone in the planet to clean their teeth. Dental knowledge has advanced throughout the years to preserve our oral health. However, our motor skills and gingiva also degenerate due to age where arm motions are impaired and more oral pain is felt.
Elderly's deal with finger pain, swelling, restricted range of motion, and difficulty with manual activities
Empathy Research
We wanted to empathize with elderly people so we placed weights throughout our body and restricted our hearing and sight with glasses and headphones.
Goal: To understand how an elderly individual moves and feels when they are doing daily activities
Existing "Solutions"
What would be an ideal toothbrush?- thicker handles, more grip, assistance in finger placement, cushiony material, tapered/rippled bristles, softer bristles
Current solutions- attaching a tennis ball to the bottom of a toothbrush to create a better grip shape, or even using a bicycle handle, and many similar designs
Ideation
Testing & Prototype
My teammate Ken did some user testing with about 32 students to see where they placed their fingers on their toothbrush
Top Pick
Top Pick
Top Pick
Final Pick
We decided to use air dry clay to create 3 of what we thought was an ideal grip shape for toothbrushes before conducting 3 interviews with elderly people
How did we narrow it down to the top 3? - We asked an elderly cleaning lady on campus to hold our prototypes and choose which ones she thought were comfortable and usable, checking off our must haves and needs.
The Top Picks Exhibited:
Comfort Level:
Usability Level:
Pain Level:
Better results compared to the other prototypes
Interview
To test out our prototypes, 4 elderly's were interviewed at their homes
Mrs. Chen (73)
Wants to have a longer handle and larger grip to accommodate for reduced arm strength
Mr. Shen (73)
Loves simplicity in a toothbrush, and doesn't want to think too much while brushing teeth
Mrs. Qiu (83)
Needs a soft, but efficient toothbrush for cleaning both dentures and gums
Mr. Chen (84)
Prefers a toothbrush that is soft on chipped teeth, but hard enough to get food from the crevices
Final Choice: The most popular option that worked for them was the green bristle with purple and yellow grip shown above on the left in the prototype photo.
Reasoning: It had the grooves for secure grip, perfect size to hold in hand for any direction
Sensitive Teeth- Want a soft bristle that still cleans
Grip Support- cannot hold a normal skinny handle
Limited Mobility- lifting their arms up and down
BUT ALSO CONSIDER...
Mold/Dryness
Flexibility
Long Term
Pain Points
1. Limited arm movements moving up towards the mouth
Features
1. Longer and flexible neck so that you can reach farther into mouth without having to move hand too high, flexible so it won't apply too much pressure and hurt their gums
2. Normal toothbrush handles are too small and skinny for them to grip onto
2. Large round grip that allows for easy and comfortable hand holding no matter what position it is, silicone material with a grid-like pattern that molds to anyones finger placement (grooves and grid also prevents mold)
3. Bristles need to be efficient in cleaning but also soft
3. Replaceable bristles (long term choice) so that they can choose the most suitable bristle type for their needs
3D Printing + Final Touches
After the completion of our Fusion 360 models, we 3D printed all of the pieces with a soft PLA (for the grip) and normal PLA (head and handle). We also spray painted the handle silver to make it more visually appealing
