Mileha Soneji aims to design simple life-improving hacks for people with disabilities.
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| Mileha Soneji designed a cup to keep people who have shaky hands from spilling their beverages. April 14, 2016
Soneji believes that empathy and imagination is key to a successful design.
“You have to imagine and create objects that meet the needs of people who are sick, who have disabilities,” she told HuffPost France.
As she continued to observe her uncle, Soneji found an opportunity for yet another invention that would improve the quality of life of Parkinson’s patients.
She noticed that he found it easier to walk up or down the staircase in his home than on flat ground.
“So this person who could not walk on flat land was suddenly a pro at climbing stairs,” she said in her TED Talk. “On researching this, I realized that it’s because it is a continuous motion. So the key for me was to translate this feeling of walking on a staircase back to flat land.”
She played around with some ideas and finally landed on a simple two-dimensional representation of a staircase that can be glued to the ground to allow people with Parkinson’s to walk quicker and smoother. She calls it the “staircase illusion.”
“Technology isn’t always the solution,” Soneji told HuffPost France, explaining that the best solutions, in her experience, have been the simples.
Soneji now works in the Netherlands and is currently co-writing a paper on the “staircase illusion” with Bastiaan Bloem, a consultant neurologist at the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Centre. Bloem was charmed by Soneji’s staircase idea and plans to test it on more patients. Even though her uncle is the only patient so far who has tried and benefited from the “staircase illusion,” Soneji hopes her designs will improve many more lives.
Staircase illusions: Problems walking with Parkinson's Disease
http://health.einnews.com/article/321494665/lrNomMuhoLDKabnT
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