This piece was part of a research project I conducted where I was working on designs for arthritis and how to make their lives easier throughout the day. My research helped me to find that the forms of arthritis affect the body differently and can be localised, however, the majority of challenges arise with the hands and fine motor skills, like gripping a pen or pencil. I conducted my own study of my day, and then retrospectively analysed what tasks I had performed that day and which ones would cause difficulty for someone with arthritis. With these tasks analysed, I started my ideation.
With many of my designs leaning towards interaction with the hands or something that required the user to use their hands to function, this made me realise that for me to properly design and understand this problem area I needed to find a way to empathise with the people I was designing for. This led to me creating my own empathy glove.
Using elastic cord, MDF rings, a strap buckle, a few pieces of Velcro and glue I had modified a simple work glove into an empathy glove with adjustable tensions to increase or decrease sensitivity, this did a great job at simulating what it would be like to have arthritis in a simple way of reducing the strength of my grip/ increasing the amount of effort to grip as hard. While these rather clunky MDF rings sometimes got in the way of tasks the design still allowed me to perform actions and understand this affliction better.