Glasses
I designed these glasses to educate and build empathy about different eye conditions. They work by sliding in different lenses that depict different eye conditions, allowing the user to experience what life would be like if they had that condition.
Timeframe : June 28th - July 21st Role : Designer Skills : Fusion 360, sketching, power tools, painting, graphic design
My process
I knew early on what I wanted the general form of the glasses to be like, so I didn't deviate much from my original design, pictured on the left. The most important thing to me was that the device would be self explanatory to use, so I tried to make it as simple looking as possible, so that anyone could use it, whether it be an older person or a child. I also really wanted there to be only one frame and several different lenses you could insert, meaning that the glasses could be adapted to include more conditions if I wanted to add any.
I began researching different eye conditions to decide which ones I wanted to portray. I settled on six - glaucoma, cataracts, age related macular degeneration, macular edema, diabetic retinopathy, and floaters. I used resources like the National Eye Institute (https://www.nei.nih.gov/) and the American Optometric Association (https://www.aoa.org/) to take notes on the symptoms and treatments available for each condition. It was extremely important to me that this tool be used solely for informational purposes, and not as a self diagnosis tool, so I wanted to make it as accurate as possible.
I used Fusion 360 to model the glasses, using my own glasses as a reference.
Left side image shows the final model, and the right side depicts the slit I included so that it would be easy to insert the lenses I was going to design after the print was finished.
I used my school's 3D printer (Thanks Mr. Capriles!) to print out the glasses. It was really cool to see the glasses emerge before my eyes and I was really happy with the final print, pictured below.
Now that the glasses were done, the next step was to create the lenses.
I ordered 3mm acrylic pane, because I thought that would be thin enough that it would be easy to slip in and out of the glasses, but sturdy enough so that it wouldn't instantly snap.
I started by making a cardboard prototype that fit in my 3D print of the glasses, so I could use those measurements to cut the acrylic panes.
Cutting the acrylic panes using my school's bandsaw (Thanks Mr. Ferguson!) was easily the most time consuming and difficult part of the project. I had never used a band saw before, so after learning the basics, I began cutting 6 versions of the same shape. I made many slight errors that made it difficult to insert the acrylic into the glasses, so I had to restart several times.
When it came time to paint the lenses with their respective disorders, I was thankful for the extensive research I had done early on in the process. I wanted to depict each condition in the most general way it manifested itself, which was a difficult task. I used acrylic paint to paint each design on, and for most I did several layers to recreate clouded vision, a symptom of most eye disorders.
Next, I used Adobe Illustrator to create what I called the "info cards", which had a brief description of the disaease, symptoms, and treatment options. I also used paint.net to digitally recreate what I had painted on each card, and then added that drawing onto the info card. They ended up looking like this :
Results
