B.EAUTYlities
Assistive technology for people living with rare and/or chronicle diseases
Research collaboration
- 📅 · Period:
Sep 2017 – Apr 2018 💰 · Collaboration:
Research collaboration, Il Bullone, Fondazione Near Onlus.🏛 · Main facility:
+LAB, Politecnico di Milano, Italy🤝 · Partners:
1 academic/industrial institutions and 1 non-profit organization, Italy⭐ · My Role:
Master Thesis Student🏫 · My Affiliation:
Master Thesis Student in Design & Engineering, Department of Chemistry, Materials, and Chemical Engineering "Giulio Natta", Politecnico di Milano (Italy)🏷️ · Keywords:
Codesign, Assistive technology, Customization, 3D printing, Cancer treatments, Chronic diseases, PICC, Social acceptance, Social sustainability, Parametric design.
Overview
B.EAUTYlities is a research project developed at +Lab, the 3D printing research laboratory of Politecnico di Milano, in collaboration with Il Bullone and Fondazione NEAR Onlus. The project focused on co-design to develop customizable, low-cost assistive products for people living with cancer treatments and chronic diseases, using low-cost 3D printing and parametric design. Patient co-designers, in this case members of the B.Live community, joined a multidisciplinary team of designers and medical staff in a workshop session, contributing personal briefs corresponding to specific daily-life needs arising from their treatments. The project led to a codesign activity carried out with one of the participants, which resulted in two 3D-printed customizable assistive products to manage a peripherally inserted central catheter (PICC) during daily routines: IF, a customizable bracelet designed to protect the catheter during outdoor activities, and THEN, a customizable waterproof product enabling silicone cold-casting for use during showers and beauty-care routines. Both products are distributed with open-source licenses and made available via parametric online configurators on ShapeDiver, allowing users to customize their devices and fabricate them with desktop-size 3D printers. 1
Romani A*, Consonni MC, Levi M (2022) Improving user experience of assistive technology through codesign and 3D printing: a case study from cancer treatments. In: Stephanidis C, Antona M, Ntoa S, Salvendy G (eds) HCI International 2022 – Late Breaking Posters. HCII 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 1654, pp. 450–457. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-19679-9_57
Project partners
+LAB, Politecnico di Milano (IT) 🇮🇹
Il Bullone, Fondazione NEAR Onlus - National Italian non-profit organization for adolescents and young adults living with chronic diseases (IT) 🇮🇹
Team members
+LAB Team: Marinella Levi, Alessia Romani
B.Livers: CarolinaMaria Consonni
💡
My contribution:
- Co-design: Participated in co-design workshops with patient co-designers, medical staff, and BLive members; working on data collection, session reporting, and documentation.
- Product design: Worked on concept development and design of the selected brief among the ones from the workshop; coordinated contextual testing of all products with co-designers during dedicated sessions.
- Additive manufacturing: Prototyped and fabricated variants of the two products (IF and THEN) using low-cost Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) 3D printing, including silicone casting in 3D printed molds.
- Parametric design & online customization: Developed parametric definitions in Rhinoceros/Grasshopper for the customizable parts and created the online configurators on ShapeDiver; produced replication documentation and assembly instructions.
- Graphics & visual: Designed graphic materials for all product packaging and documentation (box - instructions).
- Dissemination: Publications, conference presentations, participation in community outreach events.
Online configurators for IF: customizable PICC protection for outdoor activities
[Picture]
Preview of the online configurator for the customization of IF
Online configurators for THEN: customizable PICC protection for beauty-care routines
[Picture]
Preview of the online configurator for the customization of THEN
Research and dissemination output connected to my work
- 📚 Publications: 1 Master thesis, 1 Conference Paper
- ⚙️ Technology Transfer: 1 on OSF, Shapediver online configurators of the customizable parts.
- 🎤 Presentations: Work presented at academic conferences and industrial events, including 24th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Online, 2022)
- 📢 Dissemination & outreach: Work presented at community outreach events, such as Technology Hub 2018, and exhibited at international fairs, including Maker Faire Rome 2017; featured in videos.
Selected dissemination and media outreach
+IF & THEN presented at Technology Hub 2018
IF&THEN exhibition at Technology Hub 2018 (May 17-19, 2018)
Innovation and humanity merging +LAB & B.LIVE (Innovazione e umanità mischiando +LAB & B.LIVE)
Il Bullone (Jun 2017) - Italian newspress
- Innovation and humanity merging +LAB & B.Live (Innovazione e umanità mischiando +LAB & B.LIVE ) Il Bullone, Dec 2017. Italian newspress, hardcopy version
Who is scared of 3D printing? - (Chi ha paura della stampa 3D?) - Marinella Levi @TEDx Macerata 2018
Video of TEDx Talk speaking about +LAB and the B.EAUTYlities project
Publications from the project
Conference papers
- Romani A*, Consonni C, Levi M (2022) Improving user experience of assistive technology through codesign and 3D printing: a case study from cancer treatments. In: Stephanidis C, Antona M, Ntoa S, Salvendy G (eds) HCI International 2022 – Late Breaking Posters. HCII 2022. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol. 1654, pp. 450–457. Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-19679-9_57
Master thesis
- Romani A (2018) Over 5/95. 3D Printing and Parametric Design for customizable daily life products. M.Sc. thesis in Design & Engineering, Politecnico di Milano. Link: politesi.polimi.it
Technology transfer from the project
Online configurators
- Romani A (2022) IF — customizable PICC protection for outdoor activities. Online configurator. ShapeDiver.
- Romani A (2022) THEN — customizable PICC protection for beauty-care routines. Online configurator. ShapeDiver.