Design for disabilities

This project for Accessible Construction, was a quick and low budget ideation exercise to explore an easy to install end cap that covers an elastomer extrusion shower dam. A shower dam holds back water in a wheelchair accessible shower, allowing a chair to easily move in and out of a shower (that is lever with the surrounding floor) over the collapsible dam. The need of this project was to evaluate the problems with adhering the existing product directly to a shower wall and come up with solutions for making this process easier for novice installers.

Phase I sketch presentation

OLD Design - Image of the extruded shower dam adhered to a shower wall

This End Cap is in production. We used a low cost manufacturer overseas, which means we were limited to texture options and fast turnaround that larger manufacturing centers have. Part quality was not compromised.

Instead of going the adjustable end cap route like many of the proposed concepts, we landed on offering 2 models that create a SOLID fit with the wall and shower dam extrusion. With the market research that was compiled, a 90mm radius and 9mm radius version was created. The 9mm will fit custom tiled showers and the 90mm will fit most molded shower bases.

Final CAD models

3D prints of Final form before tooling

Ryan