A second aspect of the
FLL process, one that is equally important with the robot game, is the project. This seasons topic was Senior Solutions. The team had to find and interview a person over the age of 65 and ask them how life had changed as they aged. From this the team had to look at some of the difficulties that older people had encountered and come up with a practical solution to these problems.
We started by everyone in the team interviewing their grandparents. The team then brought transcripts of the manuscript back to the meeting and we looked at the various problems. There were many. However the biggest thing we noticed was an age split. Many of the people we interviewed were only just over 65. They said they found life easier, less pressured, they had more money, more time and less responsibility. Some of the older people, those over the age of 80, were beginning to experience more problems.
We looked at deafness, difficulties in opening the car door in the wind, robotic hoovers, getting around out and about when you can't hear so well. ageism and a small problem with plug sockets.
These were narrowed down to ageism which the team felt was a very important aspect of getting older and the small problem with the plug sockets.
We asked Quinn's Grandma to be our senior partner. She used to lecture on social policy at Salford University and had plenty of information for us. We spent an afternoon chatting to her about her experience of retirement, what ageism she had experienced and how she thought we could tackle it. In order to share what we found we came up with an information leaflet which the team then distributed at local libraries, doctors and AGE UK shops.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwcAuKfctfTTOVJ4MEF2RWtHbkE/edit?usp=sharing
As a team we were sure that the ageism was the most important problem we had encountered, however we were not sure it was what the judging panel were looking for. The competition is geared very much towards training people for industry. We felt they might be interested in a product. So we decided to tackle the plugs problem. Laurence's grandma lives in sheltered housing and all the plug sockets have been raised to waist height so it is easy to plug things in without bending down. There is however a fundamental design flaw. If you drop a plug you cannot pick it back up again.
After much design modification, debate, trial and error and struggles with materials we came up with a simple plug holder.
This model is made of wood but we envision the final product to be made in similar plastic to a plug socket which we think would make it cheap and easy to manufacture. It fits round the plug socket like this
Unfortunately the next picture is not so good as I don't have any plug sockets in my house that are raised but when you drop a plug, this happens.
We also think it will double up as a good way of keeping cables organised and potentially it has uses in hospitals where plugs are usually raised behind beds, and for people of all ages who have difficulty with bending. It was also important to us that the plug holder was discrete, and did not look like a living aid as we did not want to contribute to the social stereotyping.
The team then had to present this to a judge. One of the parents captured this on video the link to which is below.
Watching the film back makes me even more proud of what we achieved, the conditions under which they gave their presentation were less than favourable. it was easier to hear on the day than the film suggests but still it was noisy and distracting and overall they did really well to keep it all together. It's not clear from the film but they also had a PowerPoint running in the background which is below.
