The Design And Research In The Manual Wheelchair Based On Disabilities' Psychological Needs

In recent years, the amount of extremity disability, caused by the natural disasters and traffic accidents, is continually increasing and the lower extremity disability takes a big proportion. To people who get lower extremity disability, the wheelchair plays an extremely important role during their lives.However, electrical and intelligent wheelchairs have their weakness that their high price can not be afforded by general people, even though they always applied with innovative designs. On the other hand, manual wheelchairs have been got less development, but still hold the majority market share. Unfortunately, present manual wheelchairs only provide simple functions. Their shapes are boring, as well as the colors. These designs will definitely not meet the deep needs of disable people. What makes thing even worse is that disable people's body and mentality will hardly influenced by negative reasons of lack satisfactions of physical and mental needs. This paper will discuss how to take care psychological healthy for lower extremity disables through the studies of manual wheelchairs and will come up usable solutions of the redesign works.The paper will start from the research analysis of presenting manual wheelchairs and the summaries of categories and functionalities. It will also deduce the body dimensions, which closely equal to lower extremity disability's size, for ordering following design works and for the research of lower extremity disables' movement area.The paper stands from psychological aspect to analysis disability people's mental features and their related reasons, which, at the end, obtain the conclusion that disability people's mental problems are caused by social ignorance. So, when we ask for user requirements of disability people, we have to clear that the wheelchair design should reach a higher level, which is disability people's psychological need. That means, humanity caring and emotional design are significantly necessary to this project.To a single product, the product itself, its value and the evaluation are three emotional factors. Through the examples of these three factors, the paper will conclude the methodology that how to create emotions during design process and explain how to combine it with practical wheelchair designs. Finally, it will give constructive ideas about how to make a wheelchair design.The last part of the paper is writer's design practice. It will propose four specific problems about present manual wheelchairs and how they got solved. It will also present the final design with its construction, its principles and its reliability.