Design a fridge for a person in a wheelchair.

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Design a fridge for a person in a wheelchair.

Asked at Microsoft over a year ago

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Joe_riley · Answer 1 · 2021-08-28T23:14:31+0000

Clarification

What type of fridge are we talking about? There are minifridges like you would see in a college dorm, industrial grade fridges built for restaurants, and the standard fridge you would see in a household. I am going to make the assumption we're talking about household fridges as that is less of an edge case.

Goal

Before we dive into solving this problem, we should first take a step back and think about why are we doing this? What is our company trying to accomplish with this project? Is there a specific aspect or area we should focus on? Given the prompt, I'm just going to assume we are trying to make life easier for those in wheel chairs by providing a really good user experience. There are already enough other obstacles involved with being in a wheel chair.

Users

It is difficult to come up with a magic bullet that solves everything for everyone, so let's look at some of the different user segments and choose one to focus on.

Fully able-bodied: There are going to be other people, family members, guests, or caretakers, also using the same fridge.
Paralyzed from waist down: These people won't be able to use their legs, but still maintain use of their upper body.
Temporarily wheelchair bound: Healing from a physical injury like knee surgery or a broken leg.
Paralyzed from the neck down: Can't use their arms or legs, probably have a motorized wheelchair.

Out of the above user segments, I'm going to focus on the paralyzed from the waist down user segment. This is both a large user segment and a user segment where there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to user satisfaction.

Pain Points

1. It's hard to reach items in the back of the fridge

2. Similarly, its difficult to reach items that are either high up or down low.

3. Putting away the groceries is an arduous process.

4. Opening the door can be an awkward experience, if you think about it you simultaneously take a step backwards while pulling the door because it extends out into the space you're occupying.

Solutions

Now that we have a better sense of some of the pain points and areas of frustration users in wheelchairs face when dealing with refrigerators let's brain storm some solutions to their problems:

1. Lazy Susan Shelves - In order to help users reach items in the back of the fridge we will build shelves that spin like a turn table thus bringing the front items to the back and the back items to the front.

2. Stout Model Refrigerators - To alleviate issues with reaching items higher up or far back we could offer a shorter and wider model refridgerator.

3. Robot Arm Picker - Imagine a claw machine, but for the refrigerator.

4. Garage Style Doors - Instead of having doors that open out, we could have doors that open up and rollback ontop of the fridge like garages.

Prioritization

In all likelihood we won't have the bandwidth or the resources to build out all three solutions in parallel so let's pick one to prioritize. To help guide that conversation I'm going to use the following comparison matrix:

Ease of Implementation, User Satisfaction

1. A+, A

2. B-, B+

3. C-, A-

4. B+, B

Based upon the above comparisons, I'm going to suggest we focus our efforts on the Lasy Susan Shelves.

Summary

In order to provide a better user experience to wheelchair users paralyzed below the wait using refridgerators, we are going to build lazy susan shelves. These shelves will rotate allows users to access the previously unaccessible items in the back of the fridge.

Igal Pronin · Answer 2 · 2021-07-26T20:49:13+0000

Clarifying questions:

First of all, I'd like to ask some clarifying questions, in order to ensure I completely understand the situation:

Who is the designer and manufacturer of this product (in some fashion, who are WE)? A home appliances manufacturer or a non-profit organization whos aim is to improve the wellbeing of the disabled? That would indicate what our actual goals are.
Are we going to redesign an existing product or build one from scratch?
Is it to be installed at a regular kitchen or in a special institution, housing disabled people?
Is the product is going to be used only by disabled people or also by their household?

For this exercise, I'll assume we are building a fridge for disabled people, that also suited to be used by healthy people.

Pain points of people on wheelchair:

Opening the door would prove difficult, as not every disabled person have enough strength.
For people on wheelchair, opening the traditional fridge door would be problematic, as it would require to move back, in order to allow the door to fully open, without the wheelchair getting in the way.
Due to movement limitations, for a person in wheelchair It may be difficult to reach groceries from upper and lower compartments.
It's also difficult to reach groceries from the deeper areas of the shelves.

Solutions:
I'd like to refrain from defining apps and IOT devices, and prefer to focus on the physical solutions:

Problem	Soluton	Impact	Effort
The opening angle of the door	Sliding door that slides vertically or sideways	High	Moderate
Difficulty to open the door, given lack of strength	Automatic opening by pushing a button/touchscreen, without using manuial handle	High	Moderate
Difficulty to reach groceries from upper and lower compartments	The fridge will be wider and lower, so the shelves will be placed within reach of a sitting person	High	High
Difficulty to reach groceries from the deeper areas of the shelves	Possibility #1: pull out shelves. Needs an automatic retraction mechanism when the door is closing.	High	Low
	Possibility #2: completely reworked inner storage solution - round shelves, sitting on one central axis, so clients could spin it in order to get to the right product .	High	High

Based on this, I'd prioritize those solutions:

Pull out shelves
Sliding door, that slides vertically or sideways
Automatic opening by pushing a button/touchscreen, without using manuial handle
Round shelves, sitting on one central axis, so clients could spin it in order to get to the right product
Changing the proportions/ratio of traditional fridge