Transform Your Ordinary Transfer Shovel to a "Transformer" Shovel Today!

In my first STEAM course of the junior year, Design & Engineering, we discussed what tools are. We learned about the meaning of tools, different simple machines, and how they may be beneficial in our everyday lives. We started the term by going out to our school garden and picking up trash using only our hands, and also planted some plants. We calculated the amounts of plants that we planted in however many minutes we were out there just to get a rough estimate. The following week we did the exact same tasks, but this time we used gardening tools like hand cultivators, shovels, etc. We also calculated the amount of time we were out there planting and how many plants we planted. This activity showed us just how easy it is to use tools and how quick they can get the job done. We discussed different simple machines that we see in our everyday lives including levers, wedges, screws, and inclined planes. We also learned about the Pythagorean Theorem, Soh-Cah-Toa (trigonometry), ratios, and vectors. We also thought about how empathy can be a part of the design process when trying to sell your item. We thought about how not all tools and objects that we buy can be made for everyone. There are people in this world who are disabled and aren't able to use these items like everyone else would. This information would help us with our action projects that were coming up. We had the chance to visit Home Depot near our school and participated in a workshop led by an employee who taught us about different tools used for gardening, and we were given partners to work with for our AP's. While at Home Depot, my partner and I had to choose a gardening tool that we would be able to redesign for an elderly person. Prior to the choice of our tool, we were also asked to interview with a gardener. I interviewed my grandmother and throughout the process I noticed that she was finding it quite difficult to use the gardening tools due to her knee problems. My partner and I decided to take this problem into our own hands and redesign a transfer shovel that we had seen during our FE to Home Depot. Learn more about our redesign down below!
Defense: We have created an ergonomic “d-handle” transfer shovel that makes transferring soil and gravel easier without having to use so much force on your back or knees. The shovel takes out soil and gravel and makes transferring easier and speeds up the gardening process. Our shovel is contoured to your body and has an extension that can extend up to 70 inches. You can pull the handle bar in order to extend. Get a better grip by putting your handle on the “d-handle” that has been contoured to fit your hand comfortably and hold onto the lower grip just under the extension to take out that soil. We know that two of the most common problems that elderly people face day to day is dealing with back pain and knee pain. We want to make gardening still an enjoyable activity rather than a task. We have made sure to think about key elements that go into gardening without taking the fun away, but including safer elements to our design. We would say that our tool works like a lever. We usually see in shovels that in the input force is at the top which is where your hands are pushing the shovel into the soil. In our case, the fulcrum is in the middle (extra grip stabilizer) allowing there to be a balance once you take the soil out which is exerting force out of the ground. There’s an up and down motion and the fulcrum in the middle which makes it a 1st class lever.

What are the parts?

Extendable Length Optimizer: Works like a telescope just pull out each handlebar that extends 14 inches for each handlebar. In general, the ergonomic “d-handle” transfer shovel can extend up to 70 inches (5’10)

Bendable Handshape Grip: Fits your hand perfectly and comfortably.

Body: Contoured (wavy) body in order to make your job easier and work with your body shape rather than having a stiff & hard handle bar which puts more pressure on your back.

Extra Grip: Helps you stabilize yourself while transferring gravel or soil.

Latch/ Button: Allows you to detach the blade from the body making it easier to clean.

Blade: Aluminium based making the tool lighter overall, and we added some sharper edges at the end but not too sharp to be dangerous for anyone who uses this transfer shovel!

Here are FOUR reasons why our tool is better than the competition:
Ergonomic body: Fitting your body shape and making it easier to work with because the extra grip is at the right spot of the shovel providing maximum comfort on your back, less force is made on your back, and you won’t have to bend down as low which protects your knees from any pain.

Handle grips: Providing more comfort throughout the tool and using two hands in different areas gives not only better grip but more balance causing you not to fall.

Extendable Length Optimizer: Are you tired of having to put force on your back while gardening? Well, we have made our tool extendable up to 70 inches (5’10) which is the average height making it easier and not cause you to slouch down as much. Do not worry, the extension shafts in our shovel does not affect the overall weight of the shaft because although we use wood, the wood that is used for the shaft is thinner making the weight distribution feel lighter.

Blade: The blade can move in a 360 motion making it easier to scoop out and dump soil or gravel to your pile. Along with the 360 motion blade, it's detachable! This makes the cleaning process 10 times faster!

Purpose:

Throughout this unit, the idea of empathy kept coming up on our minds. What makes a design a design? I personally feel that a design should be well thought of before engineered. When designing a product, you should be thinking about different people in this world who all go through different situations rather than what you have experienced yourself. What makes a true design is when you think about the people that can use the design, and that's how your design can become successful. While I was watching my grandmother struggle with some of the tools that she used, I realized that many designers don't really think about their audience to whom they are designing the product for. Sure they get the idea, but do they actually test out the item before it reaches the market?

The process:
When I was talking to my partner about redesigning a tool, I made sure to discuss the issues that I had seen my grandmother go through to base our future redesign on those issues. Our issues were back and knee problems that correlate with one another when using a shovel. It's sort of like a cause and effect situation. If you bend down when taking soil out, you hurt your back. When you're bending down, you apply more force on your knees causing knee pain and damage. It's a problem that needs to get solved. While at Home Depot, we were looking at the shovels that we think can cause the worst back and knee pain. We chose not only the shortest transfer shovel, but the most uncomfortable to hold. The "Anvil D-Handle Transfer Shovel" was our competition. We worked with the shovel throughout the workshop led at Home Depot and realized that this may be one of the toughest shovels an elderly person can use. When we go back, we thought about different ways to improve the design without losing the idea of the D-handle. The D-handle was efficient when thinking about the grip in which you place your hand through. We created a rough sketch of our design the first day of designing and presented our ideas to the class. We received feedback from our classmates the second round of the design process for what we can change or what they liked about our redesign. We created a storyboard on how potential customers can use our design efficiently and effectively. Lastly, we recorded our volume and surface area of one part of our design, we included vectors of where our input and output forces can be found throughout the design, and found a relevant quote that inspired our design process. If you want to see this information, click on the slideshow down below!


Our Slideshow Presentation:

In conclusion, this AP was quite interesting to complete. This AP made me realize how important it is to think about everyone when designing a product. There are people in this world who are disabled and who aren't able to do day to day tasks. We should make products that are designed for everyone rather than products that only work for certain people. Also, you get more of an audience when you an include everyone making your design better than the competition. The next time I design a product, I will always think about empathy and pleasing my potential audience!