Design Through Making
Yijia Huang
Yijia Huang is a Chinese product designer with an industrial design background. She graduated from the Royal College of Art Design Products in 2020.
She is passionate about material experiments, including natural materials and artificial fabrics. Her work focuses on exploring possible applications based on material properties and human behaviour. In these processes, it provokes her to rethink the narrative and function of a product as well as how she could lead the project through different approaches.
Sponsors
Footfalls and Heartbeats Limited
Material experiment- textile integrated with optical fibre
Low back pain posture monitoring
Technical detail
Prototype
Data flow
Up to 84% of adults have experienced or currently experiencing lower back pain in their lifetime, especially for people that are required to sit for long periods, for example, office workers. which represents a high demand in management or prevention of lower back pain.
The project aims to encourage users to improve their posture and further decrease the prevalence and symptoms of lower back pain as conservative treatment and reduce the usage of other treatment methods e.g. pain relief medication.
Upright is a modular design wearable device for lower back pain patients to monitor and correct their sitting postures at anytime and anyplace to improve sitting behaviour. Mainly depending on the optical fibre sensor(OFS) pressure and flex monitoring system, once it detects an over high pressure (or bending angle), it will generate a vibration feedback at that position.
According to the observation of patient behaviour and the research about the marketing gap, the product applies optical fibre sensors in textiles constructions creatively, which provides users with a soft and comfortable wearing experience. This kind of sensor can be directly embedded in the textile structure. With its smaller size, comfortability and more accurate data collection, it is more suitable for long-term monitoring compared to traditional wearable sensors.
Furthermore, Upright developed the modular textile structure for OFS, which would allow the electronic devices to be removed for convenient aftercare and consider more possibilities of wearing on different occasions.
The project is an exploration of the wearable medical device in the near future. The design and technology make the monitoring a fluid and flexible interface on the body, which helps people get rid of the solid equipment.
The project aims to encourage users to improve their posture and further decrease the prevalence and symptoms of lower back pain as conservative treatment and reduce the usage of other treatment methods e.g. pain relief medication.
Upright is a modular design wearable device for lower back pain patients to monitor and correct their sitting postures at anytime and anyplace to improve sitting behaviour. Mainly depending on the optical fibre sensor(OFS) pressure and flex monitoring system, once it detects an over high pressure (or bending angle), it will generate a vibration feedback at that position.
According to the observation of patient behaviour and the research about the marketing gap, the product applies optical fibre sensors in textiles constructions creatively, which provides users with a soft and comfortable wearing experience. This kind of sensor can be directly embedded in the textile structure. With its smaller size, comfortability and more accurate data collection, it is more suitable for long-term monitoring compared to traditional wearable sensors.
Furthermore, Upright developed the modular textile structure for OFS, which would allow the electronic devices to be removed for convenient aftercare and consider more possibilities of wearing on different occasions.
The project is an exploration of the wearable medical device in the near future. The design and technology make the monitoring a fluid and flexible interface on the body, which helps people get rid of the solid equipment.
Medium:
wool, cotton, electronics, optical fibreSize:
660 x 380 x 180mmIn Collaboration with:
textile designer