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Showing posts from October, 2020

an Extra - Arm

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In this unit Design and Engineering, we learned about levers, wedges, and tools. The project is asking us to create our own garden tool that is more accessible to senior citizens. The user is senior citizens and what makes them unique is that as people get older, gardening becomes a much more difficult task. Gardening becomes more difficult to them due to the decline in vision, failing manual dexterity, and difficulty stooping and lifting. Empathy relates to this project because if you want to design a tool that senior citizens can actually use, designing with empathy is the way to go. Empathy is when you put yourself in someone else's to try to understand how they are feeling. I learned that high quality and useful gardening tools are often expensive. The gardener I interviewed told me that she "sees gardening as a relaxing and meditation activity." The tools that my gardener found ineffective were the ones that, over time, had grips that could hurt the user's hand.