Aira, is a sustainable innovation and an accessible solution, designed to create a better quality of life for quadriplegic individuals as well as their caretakers; powered solely by air pressure, containing zero electrical components.
Home Aspirator & CPAP
Duration: 14 weeks
Collaboration with Nicholas Choi
Designed for Terrance and Mom ❤️
WHY
To create a better quality of life for quadriplegic children and their caretakers.
As well as driving meaningful change in the overlooked and unsustainable design of home medical products.
Design Opportunity
For children like Terrance, an aspirator is a device that must be by his side 24/7.
A product that’s used daily doesn’t just sit in your space, it integrates into your life.
Such an essential product deserves to be designed thoughtfully, sustainably, and most importantly, with love.
If the battery decays, the entire device is inoperable
Components are non-replaceable
Expensive with short lifespan
Severely under-designed
No anchor point for suction yankauer (tip)
Excess tubing serving as tripping hazard
Fluid leakage
Pain Points
How can we make a simplified yet beautiful aspirator that is purposeful, sustainable, and afforadble?
THE GOAL
Human Centered
Aspirators on the market are severely under-designed, failing to meet user needs. Aira addresses this by deeply understanding user challenges and delivering unorthodox, yet highly effective solutions that significantly improve quality of life.
Efficiency
Utilizing an energy source that’s already present in our user’s home; that energy source being supplemental oxygen. Through applied physics, we created a system that allows Aira to operate better than current battery powered aspirators/cpap’s on the market.
Powered solely by air pressure. Containing no battery, no motor, and producing minimal noise.
By eliminating the need for electrical components, the cost of acquiring an aspirator and CPAP becomes extremely affordable.
Quality of Life Improvements
The yankauer is positioned to rest at a precise angle that aligns directly into the flush container; an intentional design that intuitively lets user’s flush the system each time it's set down, streamlining a step that’s typically done manually after every use.
The internal coiling compartment allows users to take out only what’s necessary, eliminating visual clutter and any sort of tripping hazards caused by excess tubing.
How it Works
Aira utilizes a principle in physics called the Venturi Effect. This effect occurs when air flows through a constricted section of a pipe, increasing its velocity and decreasing its pressure, hence creating a vacuum.
This is how the aspirator portion of our system functions. As for the CPAP portion, we utilize an already existing invention called an EZPAP, a product that utilizes external oxygen in order to deliver positive airway pressure into its user.
Proof of Concept
By rigging a 3D-Printed venturi chamber onto an air compressor and suction yankauer, we were successfully able to create a working vacuum.
Previous user flow analysis
Turn the aspirator on, suction baby, flush the suction yankauer, squeeze the yankauer in-between the tubing and pressure gauge, turn the machine off.
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updated user flow analysis
Turn the aspirator on → Suction baby → Rest the suction yankauer (automatically flushes system) → Turn Aira off
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Design Journey
Possible solutions, however…
From our initial ideation phase, we ended up with 3 concepts. Each of these concepts were solutions that required us to add more components in order to reduce pain points.
This was not our goal.
We wanted to reduce components in order to completely fix certain issues.
Aha Moment
Children with respiratory issues severe enough to where they are require to have an aspirator or a CPAP will 100% also own supplemental oxygen as well.
We can utilize this already existing power source to power an aspirator and CPAP.
Reduce and Push
Knowing we can utilize air pressure (o2) to power both an aspirator and CPAP, what components in this existing aspirator is unnecessary?
Heat Molded and 3D Printed
Aira is designed to be extremely affordable. The outer casing and containers are heat molded while the other components can either be outsourced or 3D printed.
