Olivia Wilczek, George Chow, Erika Lopez, Eskinder Abebe & Suochun Fang
Tying hair into a ponytail is a skill most people learn at a young age using both of their hands. With one functional arm, putting your hair up becomes close to impossible without assistance from others. To address this issue, the team set out to ease this process and design a functional one-handed hair tie. Although several existing products assist with hair tying, none proved to be usable with only one hand. To fill this gap, we designed a hair tie, consisting of an elastic band looped through a plastic bead, that can be tightened with one hand to secure the hair into a ponytail. When the elastic is tight around the ponytail, the excess is wrapped around the ponytail and looped around the bead. The hair tie proved to be successful when tested by a stroke patient with one functioning, non-dominant arm. With the help of our design, we hope patients recovering from a stroke and individuals with one functioning arm can gain back some of their independence.
