STEM 2

The assistive technology project is the other part of STEM, in which Dr. C acts as our mentor. We work on this project in groups to help others in the community.

We are the Groovy Girls! Sophia Caramanica, Tim Schowalter, and Lindsey Paradise and I made up the Groovy Girls! We focused on providing more vision and autonomy to indidividauls with Autism Spectrum Disorder who have vision problems. There are many symptoms of ASD that can cause these individuals to not want or be able to clean their glasses, such as memory difficulties, sensory sensitivities, and routine based challenges. With our design approach, we wanted to ensure that we were keeping the challenges these individuals may face in mind. When designing the device, we focused on self-cleaning glasses frames. The self cleaning aspect would enable users to never have to forget to clean their glasses and make sure they are clean as much as possible.

Our design consists of a sliding bar that lowers to clean the glasses when the glasses user sets the glasses on the table. It also is able to lift up again once the user puts the glasses back on. We also wanted to ensure our design was sanitary, since due to the fact that the user may not clean the glasses as much as they should, the glasses frame may be entirely dirty. For this reason, we used copper tape around the legs, which is disinfecting.We reached out to clients to have some input in the design as well and made sure the design helped to give them vision and autonomy.

This was overall an amazing project to work on and I'm proud of the role I played in helping us along the way, as well as the work all of us did.