This project came out of Engineering for Humanity, an Olin class in which engineering students and an older adult in the local community form a design team to solve a problem of daily life. Linda used an oxygen tank, and our team focused on that.

She had been carrying her oxygen in the bag shown above, which was issued with the tank. Through our collaborative design process we created a new and improved custom backpack.

This is one of my sketches illustrating Linda’s idea to have the top of the bag flip open and closed, rather than closing with a zipper. The original bag did include a plastic grommet opening, the tubing had to be disconnected and threaded through every time, so it was easier to leave the zipper slightly open. A safer, easier to use solution for the tubing was one of our priorities for the new bag.

I was the main fabricator on the team