I designed an outdoor, within-city-mobility hand-driven (non polluting, without fuel) HPV (Human Powered Vehicle) to facilitate physically impaired people. The target user group was 18-35 years old, college going students or working persons. The goal was to enable and empower them to participate in their daily activities and bring them to the main stream. It is a lightweight device, requiring less effort to drive while allowing them to increase their strength and overall health with overall comfort.
To be mobile and to reach one’s desired destination, one needs functional lower limbs. Hence, people with lower limb impairment miss out on many opportunities and the impairment becomes a handicap. They need to be dependent on somebody in some way. So, it was a challenging situation to provide them with the required mobility to increase their connectivity, independence and self-reliance.
The inferences derived from the surveys conducted were startling: we found that the tricycle presently used by persons with physical impairments is not at all “designed.” It is just an outcome of the cheap assembly line coming out from the spares of bicycle components. My project was an attempt to free this section of society that is trapped with this dreadful form of cycle, making it more and more dependent and physically weak with different types of deformities.
This project gave me a chance to innovate some new mechanisms as solutions. My design revolved around the optimum configuration of three things namely driving, steering and ergonomic issues. Interaction with the representatives of this section of society, which is deprived of many things sensitized me and gave me a new perspective of design.
