Looking at the various problems hand helds have on house keepers and also the problem of tangled wires. The affected areas are the lumbar or back support, wrists, shoulder muscles and neck muscles. These mainly are strained coz of bad weight distribution, irrelevant handle angles and also placement of the inner suction apparatus.

The first task i had to do was to understand the various postures and i divided these into two categories, lower muscles and upper muscles. The lower muscles mainly are the back and the lumbar support.

The second task was to understand the upper extremity muscle postures and also at the same time various grips to design the handle. These studies provided a great insight into the various forms i could come up with and i based all my ideation on the studies conducted.

The first concept was a simple hand held with an ergonomic grip and a wide mouth for cleaning. I also thought of adding a soft hand grip as a material change. I also designed the profile to be a gradual curve so as to distribute weight right at the center and hence would be easier to use, but with further studies i realized that with lower functions and when reaching into small spaces it could easily slip of the hand.

With the second iteration, i went with the same form language but with a more streamlined approach and this was initially a great step with the gradual curvature i achieved and hence i did a quick 3D model and rendered it to visualize the various details i needed to add.

With a lot more sketching i concluded how the concept would work and what technology should be used and the placement of buttons, materials, manufacturing processes to be used etc.

I realized that a handle would be very necessary to maintain a good power grip and also to take the stress of the wrist muscles. Maintaining the same initial profile curvature, i came up with various sketches to add form and volume to the profile sketch and ended up with the final design sketch at the bottom.

Also to validate my findings i did a number of physical models to test them in actual use and also at the ergo lab with EMG and find out the stress on the muscles. Model C was the most comfortable and also the most ergonomic of the three and i took it to 3D and worked with Alias to create the sweeping outer surfaces. The transitions were very hard to model because of the subtle changes between the handle and the main body.

These were the various postures that were tested to find out the most comfortable and ergonomic handle positions. I finally settled with the gradual angular neutral posture.

I continued to sketch some more to finalize the details and some last minute ideas still popped up. The final 3D model was modeled with Alias® and Solidworks® and was rendered with Hypershot®. It contains a unique static dust holder that can be reused. The inner motor is a small one as most of the dust adheres to the dust holder where the holder is charged with negative ions to attract dust particles. It also has a wide mouth for cleaning and a dust indicator to alert users that the dust holder is full. Its charged via a DC output and the batteries are rechargeable.