The project entailed developing a range of walking aids for elderly people. The project had scope for extensive user survey and user feed back, hence it was a great opportunity to discover significant issues related to human centred principles that are embodied in design and to innovate better possibilities for people through observation and analysis.

The processes involved were manifold: background study on ageing as a process to have a better understanding of elderly people’s needs; meeting physicians and orthopaedics to relate theoretical understanding with practical experiences; interacting with the elderly in order to sensitise myself to their thought process; channelising the information to come up with a meaningful product which would empathise with the user group without giving them the feeling of dependence in the following areas of concern: getting up and sitting on chairs, using toilets, and getting up from their beds.

From defining the brief to user study, conceptualising, joinery and mechanism validation, user feedback to final prototyping, I did everything single handed.

India is slowly becoming an ageing economy so work in this direction has just started. People have just started thinking about it and elderly people themselves are not ready enough for a drastic change in their lifestyles. Through my project, I have tried to initiate the process by putting in a small unit in their lifestyle focusing on making the elderly feel more independent and confident.