Designing for people with hand disabilities

A lot of today’s products are great. They look good and work fine. But that is not always the case. Especially not for people who suffer from hand disabilities. This project is all about that. I decided to focus on the famous water bottle from Voss. It has a very cylindrical shape and feels very luxurious for being a water bottle. But it is useless for people who do not have good strength nor grip. A challenge that I wanted to overcome was to redesign this bottle and at the same time retain the aesthetics of the classical Voss bottle. When designing for all I believe it is of great importance to not exclude the regular customers. I believe a lot of them only buy the bottle for the already good design. So, keeping it attractive was key.  

 

I focused on the details and only made small, yet carefully selected changes. I added an extended wing on the cap that continued to the bottle. This gives the person a lever to open the bottle. I also looked further into the cap and noticed a lot of empty space. So i decided to play with that property and make a negative surface which will help to get a firm grip when rotating the cap.  Another aspect with keeping it stylish and modern is to prevent people from throwing it away as they would with any other regular PET-bottle.