Guests Madeline Lee and Meghan Mulloy, are graduate student entrepreneurs from the University of Pittsburgh’s Masters of Rehabilitation Technology program and designers of the RESNA Student Design Competition’s Audience Choice Award for Toothbrush Buddy: A toothpaste dispenser for people with motor, cognitive, or visual impairments. Listen to how they took a common household object and created a universal design for everyone.
Hosts: Dr. Michelle Zorrilla, Associate Director of Technology Translation and Mrs. Nancy Augustine, Project Manager, at the IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh,
Guests: Madeline Lee and Meghan Mulloy, graduate student entrepreneurs from the University of Pittsburgh’s Masters of Rehabilitation Technology program
Meghan Mulloy | LinkedIn
Toothbrush Buddy | Website
RESNA Student Design Challenge 2022 | Website
IMPACT Center | Website, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
Full Transcript | PDF
Key Mentions
SHRS Master of Rehabilitation Science https://www.shrs.pitt.edu/mrt
RESNA.org www.RESNA.org
SPEAKERS
Michelle Zorrilla, Nancy Augustine, Madeline Lee, Meghan Mulloy, Mary Goldberg
Michelle Zorrilla 00:05
The IMPACT Center at the University of Pittsburgh, supported by the National Institute of Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research, proudly present ImpacTech. Today's episode "Audience Choice: Creating Universal Design for Everyone," features our guests Madeline Lee and Meghan Mulloy, graduate student entrepreneurs from the University of Pittsburgh Masters of Rehabilitation Technology Program, and designers of the RESNA Student Design Competition's Audience Choice Award for Toothbrush Buddy: a toothpaste dispenser for people with motor, cognitive and visual impairments. Recorded remotely from our sound proof bedroom closets in Pittsburgh, PA, this is your guest co-host, Dr. Michelle Zorrilla, and welcome to our 18th and final episode of the ImpacTech podcast series Season Two. Welcome everyone. As our regular listeners may have noticed, the introduction sounded slightly different. My name is Dr. Michelle Zorrilla and I am joined by my colleague and guest co-host, Mrs. Nancy Augustine. We are filling in today for our host, Dr. Mary Goldberg, who is taking a little break from her hosting duties, but she will be back with us in the new year. Today we are joined by Meghan Mulloy and Madeline Lee as part of our up-and-coming technologies and entrepreneurs in rehab technology sector miniseries. Hi, Meghan and Maddie, could you please introduce yourselves for the audience?
Meghan Mulloy 01:34
I'm Meghan. And I did the masters of rehab technology at U Pitt. And so that's how I got involved with this
Madeline Lee 01:42
I'm Maddie. I am also a recent graduate from University of Pittsburgh, me and Meghan have similar backgrounds both graduated with an undergrad degree in Biomedical Engineering. And then we did the masters of rehab technology program at the University of Pittsburgh. And then how we got started was it it was a cool project to go through the entire design process and make something that is related to assistive technology.
Meghan Mulloy 02:13
Yeah, so we were in our class, and they asked us, Hey, if you know anyone that could benefit from assistive technology, you know, pitch a project to us. And we'll see if anyone else is interested in working on the project with you. So I talked to my mom, because I have a brother who has autism, and he's blind. And I was like, Hey, mom, like this is a good opportunity. Like if you know of anything that Matt could benefit from, like, I could do a project on it with some of my peers, and we could work on it for the whole year. So she was excited. She was like, Oh my gosh, like this is awesome. So we were brainstorming, and she was like, you know, Megan, one of the things that he has a hard time with right now is putting his toothpaste on his toothbrush by himself, you know, we got the brushing down, he can do that by himself. But he can't do the full activity by himself. Like what do you think? Do you think that's something you guys could do? And so I pitched it to a professor's and they were like, Yeah, that sounds great. And I asked classmates and we got enough interest that we formed a team. So we got to work on it, which was super exciting, and then go through the whole design process, which we'll tell you more about. So that's kind of how it got started. Very
Michelle Zorrilla 03:21
cool. So toothbrush, buddy came out of a need for your brother, which is a lot of times how these technologies come about people see a need either personal or just in general within a certain population that they might be working with, and, and kind of run with a new idea of something that's needed to fill a void. And so very neat.
Nancy Augustine 03:42
I'm curious to know how long this process took for you that the end you mentioned, you're going to get into the design process. But what period of time were you working in? And then how did you involve your brother or anyone else who might benefit from the product? In trying it out?
Meghan Mulloy 04:01
Yeah, that's a good question. So we had the full school year to kind of flush this out and prototype. By the end of the fall semester, we had a prototype that actually worked. And so the second semester was just spent refining it and testing it and seeing what we could tweak and change. We also got a lot of insight from my mom. I'm getting feedback from her with each iteration. And we also interviewed a lot of other people in the beginning when we were putting together our list of needs and wants. So we interviewed other users that are blind other users in their families that have autism, just to see what they need as well. Instructors for people that are blind to different teachers and OTs. So just trying to see what the needs are not just my brother, but kind of everyone that would benefit from it as well.
Nancy Augustine 04:53
And so from the needs assessment that gave you that inspiration or that ideas to start To design? And then how did you decide what materials you would use when you started to build the product? For sure.
Madeline Lee 05:09
So as we said before, me and Meghan, and at the, at the beginning, we had four members of our team, one of them graduated, and one of them took a break from from class. So sorry, As for q4, and the team have to, but anyways, in the original team of four, we all came up with different ideas of how to solve this need, we had ideas from just putting the toothpaste directly on your mouth, because that's a technique that people some people that are blind us, but has moved away from that idea, because specifically for Megan's brother, he, he tried that, and he would end up eating toothpaste before he brushed his teeth. And then we all came together with different ideas. And we took the pros and cons and made the final idea that we had an intern that kept iterating and iterating. The specific types of materials fast forward a little bit, what ended up happening was, we took an existing off the shelf, toothpaste dispenser, so you have the toothpaste and put it into this little opening, you push on a lever and toothpaste dispenses on your toothbrush. But there were many faults with that design. But since we base it off of an existing device, the material and shapes of things were adapted from that, how can we change this, we obviously since we're dealing with things that go in your mouth want to stay away from toxic materials, things are getting messy, because toothpaste is involved. So we want to be dishwasher safe, easy to clean, and we want it some sound elements. So we're thinking of electrical components, the beeping noises when enough toothpaste was on your toothbrush, landed correctly. But we wanted to stay a little more minimal, not have to charge anything not have to worry about electronics with, you know, your toothpaste or your washing water. So we ended up using a piece of aluminum that was bended in a specific way that made it click. So those were our materials, plastic and metal, we kept it simple, it was easier and cheaper and more universal of the design.
Michelle Zorrilla 07:16
So as you were going along and developing this prototype, did you face any challenges? Were there any barriers along the way, as you were trying to develop this new technology?
Meghan Mulloy 07:33
For this purpose, I would say it was a lot of just trial and error, like trying something and seeing if it worked. And sometimes it definitely didn't work, you know, the first time we did it, or even just since we're using something that was off the shelf, all the parts that we were creating had to be compatible with it. So figuring out the right dimensions to get everything to fit and be compatible was definitely something we had to play around with 3d printing, we 3d printed a lot of parts in plastic. And so we designed something on CAD it would look great and look compatible, but then when it printed, it might have shrunk down and it might not have fit as well. So just kind of problem solving and making sure everything was compatible.
Madeline Lee 08:13
And then there were also some some other challenges that came up that we weren't expecting like, Megan, if you want to talk about your brother and the toothpaste, flavors. Oh,
Meghan Mulloy 08:27
that's a great one. Yes, good point. Forgot about that. So we were designing this right and I didn't realize that the toothpaste that he uses is like a kid's toothpaste that only comes in a certain tube that has a push button. It's not your standard kinda like squeeze the tube. Because he doesn't like a strong like taste of the mint. You know? So I was like, Oh, I haven't tried it. I just got like mint toothpaste wasn't thinking it through and I had him try it. He does it and then he puts in his mouth and he's like, oh, like Crow's like totally, like turned off, you know, because it wasn't his toothpaste and I was like oh my gosh, like that was such a need like making sure his toothpaste is compatible with the device. So I had to do some searching and find one that was like pretty much the same thing. But it was just so funny. Like it's the littlest things that make such a big difference. And so finding a toothpaste that he liked and that was compatible with the device was just as important
Nancy Augustine 09:25
to patients come in different sizes. did you how did you account for that? Because what you just mentioned about your brother having a special receptacle for his toothpaste? Was there a standard size that you went with it was is universally available in the store that you know which fit into the device.
Madeline Lee 09:47
Yeah, so we chose to use your typical toothpaste, Crest toothpaste, tube shape, and then those do come in different sizes. However the nozzle is quite uniform and standard throughout all of those. So most off the shelf toothpaste do work with our device. However, some that don't have the same mechanism. However, there are some that have different caps like some, you just clip off, and it stays on a hinge. But most of those, you can still untwist it, in your end, you end up with the same red cape that that most of these come in. So thankfully, that's quite standardized. And so works along with all those however, we don't need the thread, just use the silicone circle, you just wet your toothpaste in there, if there's a variation of of size of the nozzle.
Nancy Augustine 10:50
So, question about your team, you said you started with four and then came down to two, I mean, you just cut your team in half. And during product development, that's got to be pretty challenging how? Seems like you have a great relationship. So that wouldn't be a problem. But how did you how did you address that? Because usually we delegate tasks, and then they also go back? How did that work? Can you describe that for us?
Meghan Mulloy 11:18
We both Yeah. So I would say the workload definitely increased once our team was just the two of us. But we kind of just split it up and gave each of us different tasks or different components of the device that we're going to work on or focus on. So I played around a lot with the feedback mechanism and figuring out how that would work. And that was one of the big things I did.
Madeline Lee 11:41
And I've worked on the lever and, and Trump a lot, which was basically guiding the toothbrush into its correct location. But yeah, we moved from four people to two people. And it was the first semester we had all four. And in the second semester, the teacher knew ahead of time, that we weren't going to have those other two people. So they gave us the option to drop this project and move to other larger existing groups, so that we won't have to work as much. However, we just really loved this idea. We love the project, we made so much progress, and we want to see it through. So I'm glad we pushed ourselves, we worked more hours than necessary for the class. But we did it because we really just enjoyed the work. And even though the other two members that learning from Madeline and Amy, even though they did not attend the class, we did give them the option to do tiny things, because they still wanted to be a part of the project. And we talked to our professors, and they were definitely okay with that. And so it kind of it did help us take the workload off. But they were really excited too, because they didn't want to not be a part of this project anymore. The idea was very inspiring. So they helped us out.
Michelle Zorrilla 13:02
So I have two questions. One is rookie mistake, because I should have asked you what is your invention? In a quick nutshell, right? Even though I mentioned toothbrush, buddy, so what exactly is your invention? And then also, where do you see this going? Are we going to find this on the market? Is this something that you're working to produce on a large scale, or was this purely a student project, and we just hope to stay tuned to see it sometime down the road.
Meghan Mulloy 13:33
So our device, the toothbrush, buddy, is a toothpaste dispenser that is universally designed so that people with motor, cognitive or visual impairments can do the task of putting toothpaste on their toothbrush from brushing their teeth by themselves. And so that's really important because self hygiene is super important. And it's important that they can do it independently too. So we modified an off the shelf toothpaste dispenser to make it more universal. We added different components so that the user can align their toothbrush by themselves so that there's feedback to let them know that the toothpaste is on their toothbrush, that there isn't a mess when they're brushing their teeth that the right amount of toothpaste is released every time. And it's also high contrast so that if someone with low vision has a hard time seeing hopefully the contrast will help them distinguish where the opening is in the dispenser. And so that's kind of a high level overview of our device and what it does matter. You're welcome to add anything to
14:37
To answer your second question of where we're going with that. We ended the project, really, again it we had a lot of speed. We're working on it. We ended up filing a provisional patent for this device. We submitted this project to the RESNA student design competition and we got third place and audience choice, we got the Audience Choice Award. My best award, even though it didn't have any, was an actual prize. But I loved getting the audience choice. That was that was that was really great. So from all that, you know, all the feedback we've gotten from the many users, we talked to designing it from the competition, everyone saying I will buy this, we did really want to pursue it. However, we are both just graduated with our masters and we're looking to be an ATP assistive technology professional. And both passed our tests. And we are now. Thank you. Thank you. So we're really focusing on our personal careers in that right now. However, we, we did learn a lot, and we do love and believe in this product. But right now, it's a little on the back burner right now.
Michelle Zorrilla 16:05
That's okay, no, that's important. Because not everything makes it to market, there are challenges along the way. But this kind of sets gets the ball rolling, at least the idea is there. And even if you come back to it, that doesn't mean you can't pursue it in the future. It's certainly part of the process.
Nancy Augustine 16:27
So while while you're new in your careers, are there any things that you feel that you learned during the design class or the product development phase that you can use in your new role?
Meghan Mulloy 16:43
Yeah, that's a good question. I think I've learned so much, it's so applicable to my new role, because right now I'm do a lot of seating and mobility. So creating, like custom seating solutions for clients. And so I really have to know how to problem solve. I'm the one that specking out all the different parts and making sure they're all compatible with each other when they're assembling the chair, but also making sure it meets their needs. So even just in the beginning, during the evaluation for their new chair, you have to determine what their needs are similar to how we figured out what my brother's needs were. And so I think that was a really good exercise, because I'm going to be doing that like every day, figuring out what people need. And it's similar going through kind of the design process, and also gauging the outcome to make sure it meets their goals when we deliver the equipment as well. So I think this was super helpful. And I can definitely take everything I've learned with me.
Madeline Lee 17:38
I think you need senators. And I think not only are we taking what we've learned in the class, but also the the passion that all the students had in this program, the University of Pittsburgh, masters of Rehabilitation Technology is really, really great program that attracts a very similar mindset of people who love people with disabilities and want to help them and change the world and make an impact. And I really feel like I'm, I learned a lot from not just the design class that this project came from, but the whole university of pittsburgh program and want to make a huge difference i n the disabilities space.
Nancy Augustine 18:33
You know your product. Sounds like it not only benefits people like Matt, but people in the general broader populace. lation is Well, early morning grind to get out the door, young children teaching them proper brushing. It just I think it seems like it's a great start. But it also could potentially have mass market appeal, which that's a really special thing, too. I know you're focused on your careers right now. But that'd be fun someday to see that. Not only starting in the group that you're targeting, but in the general population in general.
Madeline Lee 19:18
Of course, and we got a lot of feedback like that. I mean, I personally use our device every single day, twice a day, sometimes once a day, but don't tell my mom she's a dentist. So, I mean, I use it every day and it's helpful. And another big thing that you know, Meghan mentioned is that it adds the correct amount of toothpaste, toothbrush, or no you know what, you only need a pea size amount for brushing your teeth. Lucky. Adult Yeah, look it up.
Michelle Zorrilla 19:57
Really? I mean, I have a toddler so I knew that for my toddler but I did not know adults only need a pea size as well.
Madeline Lee 20:06
You don't need much toothpaste. So, I think our product has saved me a lot of money too. And over time, you know, I probably would go to the toothpaste twice. Now, Nancy, you made a great point I feel like a lot of assistive technology and universal design is should be that, you know, it helps people with disability but it also can help everyone. Is there a
Michelle Zorrilla 20:37
way to contact you about toothbrush buddy? Or are you just kind of setting this aside for now?
Meghan Mulloy 20:43
You can reach out to us on our website. It's toothbrushbuddy.wordpress.com. If you have any questions, we have a Contact Us tab at the top. Feel free to reach out we'd love to hear from you.
Michelle Zorrilla 20:58
It's been great to have you both on board and we wish you all the success in your careers. Hopefully one day we'll see toothbrush buddy out there on the market or even for mass consumption one way or another but thank you so much for being on the podcast and and we wish you all the best.
Madeline Lee 21:17
Thank you so much for having us. We had so much fun this was really
Mary Goldberg 21:24
Season's Greetings Impactors. I'm pleased to offer our holiday wrap up to close out our second ImpacTech season. We love swapping stories with award winning product designers highlighting the unique paths of diverse rehab tech innovators, and sharing unique considerations for those who are aging in place. We will keep our guests a surprise for season three, but you can expect us to continue to raise awareness of challenges and technology transfer and strategies to overcome them and our first release at the end of January. Until then best wishes for a restful, joyful and of course impactful holiday season. Until then continue to make an impact in whatever you do. If you'd like impacted, please review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thank you again for tuning in and continue to make an impact in whatever you do. A quick note from our sponsors. IMPACT initiatives are being developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR). NIDILRR is a center within the Administration for Community Living Department of Health and Human Services. impact initiatives do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL or HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government and the same goes for the University of Pittsburgh. We would like to thank our ImpacTech guests and our production team led by Dr. Michelle Zorrilla at the University of Pittsburgh Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology.