Arthritis

Refers to joint pain or joint disease. Symptoms include:

swelling
pain
stiffness
diminished range of motion in joints

I will focus on the effects on the hands and wrists.

The goal of assistive devices is to protect joints from stress and create ease of completion for an activity.

Objective: Create a detachable, assistive handle for kitchen knives, paired with a knife set, in order to assist people with arthritis when cooking and eating.

Repurposed Waste

Internship: MyRefactory, Hull, England

Supervisor: Becky O'Leary

Date: Summer 2025

Team: Andrea Cantu and Ava Shea Feinstein

Tools: Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop & InDesign

Project Brief

Using what we had learned during our time at MyRefactory, we were tasked to use the repurposing methods to create new and sustainable products. We chose to create a puzzle vase from Jesmonite and a kids rocking chair from "MyBoard".

Design Problem

How can we take waste and end-of-life products and make something new? What are the best sustainable methods to do this?

Research

Learn sustainable methods to repurpose waste such as injection molding, leather binding, jesmonite, and "MyBoard", which is MyRefectory's method of melting plastic to make large sheets of plastic board to make things such as tables and chairs.

Injection Molding

By inserting shredded plastic into the injection molding machine, we were able to use steel molds to make new plastic products. The steps are as follow:

Heat molds in oven and turn on injection molding machine
When machine is hot enough, insert shredded plastic
Wait about 6 minutes for the machine to melt the plastic
Screw mold together and secure it tightly by the nozzle
Press button to release melted plastic
Open mold and hope the plastic distributed evenly

Jesmonite

Jesmonite is made from a combination of gypsum (a mineral created from sedimentary rock) and water-based acrylic resin. Since I focused on making the rocking chair, Ava focused on Jesmonite. Therefore, she has a more solid understanding of the process, however, the general steps include:

Create 3D model of your product
3D print the model to serve as a mold
Pour silicon mold solution into the printed model
Wait for the silicon mold to dry
Once dry, mold is made
Pour the Jesmonite mix
Wait for Jesmonite to dry
Remove from mold
Sand until satisfied

MyBoard

This is MyRefectory's method of melting plastic to make large sheets of plastic board to make things such as tables and chairs. The steps are as follow:

Collect plastic/material i.e. bottle caps, shreds, cloth
Make design for board
Place design on hot bed carefully
Close bed (like a waffle maker)
Wait for plastic to melt together
Remove from hot bed
Wait for MyBoard to cool

Making a Brand

For the presentation of the products we made, my teammate and I decided to make a brand to represent us as designers. We chose to pursue a bright and playful direction to match our personalities and dynamic.

Making a Rocking Chair

Using MyBoard, we created a children's rocking chair by modifying an existing design MyRefactory used to make normal kids chairs and table set. We decided to do this so that they could have a stand-alone children's product as they didn't have something like that currently.

The Posters

To display our products and brand, we decided to make 5 posters. One title poster, two process posters and two product posters.

The Result