Wanna Betta' Shovel?

In my first Action Project for my Junior STEAM class, Design and Engineering, we took a deep dive into empathy. Empathy is understanding and caring about another person's situation. This is an idea that designers use when making objects for consumers to use. This is what we did for this AP. Along with my partner LHM, we designed a shovel that was made to work for senior citizens with empathy in mind. To prepare for designing, I interviewed my mother while gardening to see what tools she likes and which tools she would change. As a class, we went Home Depot to see how consumers buy tools and how businesses accommodate the supply and demand.



Our new tool is a shovel that allows you to get leverage without compromising your balance.
It does this by having a place for your knees to be able to push into the shovel allowing you to dig deeper into hard soil without lifting your feet.
The additional part is the knee rest, this allows for better leverage and greater ability to dig into the soil.
This is an example of innovation and efficiency because the shovel has a new part that allows senior consumers to be comfortable and have the confidence to shovel without losing balance.
These are the ways our tool is better than the competition's:
Our shovel has a sleeker more “modern” look, it allows for better leverage than the average shovel and it allows the older consumer to not be worried they will fall while shoveling.
How? Our shovel uses a lever as a mechanism to access the knee rests. It is a first-class lever because the fulcrum is in between the input and output.


 


In my opinion, I really enjoyed this project. I liked being able to design and customize a tool that will work for almost every consumer. If I could change anything I would change the way that using the knee rests may ignore a potential consumer that cannot use their knees.