SHERYL ANG
Wisca
2019
Designed with Jeffery Kwoh, Jelena Neo, Ritwik Jha
The current procedure for weighing wheelchair-bound children is cumbersome and inefficient. Caregivers are often required to hoist patients to the scale or to subtract the weight of the wheelchair from the measured weight. While there are existing wheelchair scales that serve the second case, these scales are suited for recording the weight of individual wheelchair models and are problematic when used in public hospitals (where a variety of wheelchair models are used). This is a concern for kids with Cerebral Palsy and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy that have to regularly measure their weight so that doctors can determine if they are meeting their nutritional needs.
Wisca is a general weighing scale for all wheelchair types that is designed for use in public service facilities like hospitals and rehabilitation centres. It is designed for use with a paired app that eases the process of weight-taking for doctors and parents. The use of RFID technology allows the child’s weight to be easily derived without the need for any hoisting.
User Journey
Each wheelchair is tagged with an NFC sticker that digitally stores the weight of the individual wheelchair.
During a hospital visit, the parent or hospital staff simply needs to wheel the child onto the scale. RFID technology in the scale detects the weight of the wheelchair stored in the sticker, and accounts for it when measuring the child’s weight.
During each weight-taking session, the measured weight of the child will also be stored in the sticker and parents can access the weight data anytime after the visit by scanning the sticker with their smartphone.
Graphical display of weight data in the Wisca app allows parents to conveniently track their child’s weight over time. This aids doctors and parents in dietary planning and for determining medical dosage.
Parents can change the weight stored in the sticker if they add new modules/supports to their child’s wheelchair. They can manually log the weight of individual modules into the app, and then scan the NFC sticker to wirelessly transfer the modified wheelchair weight.
