BINGrip Sollertia is a product designed primarily to improve dexterity in elderly adults. This is achieved by incorporating resistance training into the game ‘bingo’.

Poor dexterity is a problem that increases exponentially with age with up to 57.1% suffering from conditions such as arthritis in the 85+ age bracket. With an aging population the demographic effected by these problems is ever growing with those aged 85 years and older expected to number 3.3 million in the UK by 2033. BINGrip Sollertia aims to combat this.

The BINGrip Sollertia product comes in two parts; The ‘bingo spinner’ and the ‘bingo dibber’.

The primary function of the ‘Bingo spinner’ part of the product is to build the user’s grip strength over time whilst they play bingo. It does so by enabling the user to spin the wheel through the action of gripping and squeezing it’s handle.

The second part of the product is the ‘Bingo dibber’. It’s primary function is to increase the overall wrist flexibility and pinch grip strength in the user over time as they use it to mark numbers on their bingo card whilst playing the game.

                          ‘Bingo spinner’                                                                          Bingo dibber’

1. The bingo spinner part of the product must convert the user’s hands squeezing force into continuous one-way rotational force to spin a pre-existent bingo tombola wheel.
2. The bingo spinner part of the product must have a height adjustment system which allows it to be raised and lowered between 90mm and 140mm so it can be used with a wide variety of pre-existent bingo tombola wheels.
3. The bingo dibber part of the product must enable the user to use a pinch grip and wrist flexion to accurately mark numbers on a tradition bingo card.

User testing revealed that the two smaller grips were more comfortable for the user’s index finger but the indents were too small for their thumb. The larger grips indents were comfortable for their thumbs but too large for their index fingers. The indents were also too central. They would be more comfortable to hold nearer the back of the handle tip.

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I added indents to the handle tips of the dibber to add affordance as it was not intrinsically obvious to the user in what way they were suppose to grip the handle. It is integral the user naturally interacts with the handle using a pinch grip as this is one of the areas of dexterity this part of the product is designed to improve

I made handle tips with side grips and top grips. One each of large and small. The large catering to the 95th percentile and the small to the 5th percentile