Students use empathy to engineer solutions

Projects prompted while watching friends, families tackle tasks.

Aasritha Duriseti recently noticed her grandmother’s difficulty opening a bottle cap. By coincidence, an assignment for her eighth-grade engineering class at Carson Middle School in Herndon, Virginia, was to adapt existing products to make daily life easier for people with challenges.

Aasritha’s creativity kicked in as she researched existing bottleopening devices.

“The rectangular shape and size of a cellphone is familiar,” she said, explaining the design of her wooden bottle cap opener. Three holes in different sizes, each lined with a layer of dried, sticky hot glue, provided firm grips for common bottle caps. With a simple twisting motion, her grandmother could open beverages without assistance.

While addressing challenges that those with dyslexia, cerebral palsy, arthritis and other issues face, students in the class used more than their math, physics and tool skills. They also learned about empathy.

“Empathy is looking at problems from another’s perspective,” Aasritha said.

Teacher Mark Bolt said it’s an important part of engineering.

“Engineers need to put themselves in their product users’ shoes to build effective solutions,” Bolt said.

It was empathy, while watching friends and families tackle daily tasks, that prompted other students’ projects.

Arthritis, a joint disease, gave Roman Moreno-Hines’ grandfather trouble holding a coffee cup. So Roman simplified a robotic“third thumb”device created by London designer Dani Clode. Roman’s creation uses elastic bands and a 3D printed plastic form.“The extra ‘thumb’ can firmly support the bottom of a cup,” he said.

Michael Kuwashima noticed how dyslexia made it difficult for a friend to follow along on pages full of text. Creating a small adjustable window-blind style device, “My friend could isolate small sections of text while reading,” he said.

Sometimes just putting on a jacket or pulling up a hoodie can be hard for people with limited mobility, so Arjan Garg designed a “dressing stick” using four wood prongs of different sizes to fit different clothing.

Each adaptation went through several revisions on its way to being demonstrated. Rather than dictating step-by-step directions for creating their projects, Bolt preferred to leave students’ creative paths open.“If we want to do better, we have to have a chance to fail.”

ANN CAMERON SIEGAL/ WASHINGTON POST Aasritha Duriseti shows a bottle cap opener she designed to help her grandmother be more independent.