In the second segment of the course, our team was given the open-ended task of designing a tool that recovering brain trauma survivors could use to rehabilitate their fine motor skills as well their mental acuity during their stay at the Shirley-Ryan AbilityLab in Chicago. The product needed to be able to match the ability level of patients as they progressed and allow for creativity and reusability without the task becoming dull.
Our solution was a unique macro-breadboard kit. The kit required a variety of different fine motor motions to be assembled into a breadboard from the individual pieces. Then the electrical components, including lights, fans, a buzzer, resistors, and a battery, could be arranged to achieve goals outlined in a manual we provided. Once a user got the hang of creating working circuits, the device allowed for creative freedom in creating new circuits and achieving different results with the given components.
Electrical components were installed on the board by inserting flattened nails between the coils of a spring beneath the top surface of the breadboard. Each spring acted an electrical "node" like a row in a breadboard and each component spanned 2 flatted nails, connecting 2 nodes at a time to reach the two sides of the battery and complete a circuit.
The Shirley-Ryan AbilityLab often recruits Northwestern student groups to create devices with similar goals to the Spring Circuits to accommodate a wide variety of patients. After four years, our product is still used by our client and shown as an example of a successful project to other Northwestern teams.