Pa'buela

The Recipe

In this project, I create an ergonomic ladle meant to facilitate the experience of cooking caldo de verduras, or vegetable soup, for people with arthritis. I also create a logomark for this project. My process began by choosing traditional Mexican vegetable soup as my recipe to analyze. Overall, the recipe is pretty simple and only requires 3-4 utensils/tools to prepare, serve, and eat.

I then outlined all the utensils used in the recipe.During the preparation phase, only a knife is needed to slice the vegetables. During the cooking and serving phase, the ladle and strainer spoon are used and during the consuming phase, only a spoon is used. I was most intrigued by the ladle and strainer spoon and wondered if I could combine them in order to reduce the utensils to 1 per phase.

Research

To start, I did some research on the history and significance of my dish. The main points revealed:

Mexican soups have a long history as they date back to the Aztecs and Mayans.
Vegetable soup specifically was a fusion of indigenous, Spanish, and European flavors.
The dish itself is tied with feelings of warmth and comfort. It is commonly cooked by the women of the household (mothers and grandmothers).

From personal experience, both my mom and my grandma have cooked this dish for me and the fact that they are the ones cooking it is a big point of significance that ties into feelings of love and warmth.

I then began researching ergonomic utensils and handheld tools, how they’re made, what their purpose is, and how they help the users.

Utensils with a larger grip/handle make grasping easier, and are ideal for users with weakness, tremors, and decreased dexterity. The wider area puts less stress on the small joints of the hand, and doesn’t require as much grip strength.
Weighted utensils aid in stabilizing tremors from conditions like Parkinson’s disease, providing necessary proprioceptive feedback for the tremors.

Previously, I thought making a ladle with a large, weighted grip would be great because it would benefit 2 audiences, people with arthritis and people with Parkinson’s disease. However, making them weighted would not be helpful to people with arthritis as heavier weight would require more force, thus activate more muscles in the hand. I decided to focus on people with arthritis as it is common with old age and ties in with my chosen recipe as I mentioned it is mothers and grandmothers who usually cook this dish.

Prototyping

After sketching, I made grips out of foam and the rest of the ladle out of cardboard to get the whole feel and motion of using a ladle. I asked my classmates to hold the ladle with the 3 grips I had made. The grip with 1 curve on 1 side was received well but there were a couple people who would hold it differently thus it wasn’t comfortable. The round, bulky grip was too big to confidently grasp, but did cause for more hand relaxation. Lastly, the grip with 2 curves towards the top was more dynamic and people were able to hold it in a variety of different ways. This model provided a good curve to guide the hand placement, but also provided enough space to grip the lower, longer part of the handle if the user thought it more comfortable.

3D Modeling

Once the physical prototypes were done and I had my chosen grip, I began to 3D model in Rhino. I created the handle on NURBS by creating a curve and revolving it as I wanted to make it symmetrical. Then, I tried modeling in SubD and things went a lot smoother as the shapes were a lot easier to manipulate. I divided the build into the bowl, the stem, and the grip. In the end, I combined the bowl and the stem as they were going to be 3D printed and then attached to the wooden grip that I would make in the woodshop.

Construction

Once the 3D model was done, I headed to the woodshop to create the handle. The process was pretty straightforward as all I needed for this was the lathe. First, I drilled a hole into the block of maple wood I would use in order to attach the rest of the ladle. Then, I attached it to the lathe and shaved the wood block down to a cylinder. Once this was done, I created my guidelines and began shaping my wood into the desired shape of the handle. When the shape was done, all that was left was to sand it down and remove it from the lathe.

When the handle shape was done, I coated it with polyurethane spray to make the wood shine a bit more. This required a few coats.

As I was working on the grip, the rest of the ladle was being 3D printed. The day I received my ladle, I took it home to spray paint and attach to the handle the next day, but my brother ended up breaking it. Therefore, he printed one with his 3D printer but it did not print out as smooth as the one printed at school at all. Therefore, I spent a good amount of time sanding most of the ladle.

Once I finished sanding, I began to spray paint with a dark brown paint. This required about 2 coats for each side. The bowl made it a bit difficult to get a smooth coat but overall it was a smooth process.

Poster-Making

Now that the segments of my ladle were done, I had to take pictures of it, so I made my vegetable soup. I took my soup to school to take some pictures and in the middle of the shoot, the ladle broke again when I tried putting food in the bowl. I tried to glue it but since the stem was too thin, it wasn’t sitting right and the glue wasn’t curing fast enough. I decided to attach it with masking tape and spray painted it to cover it. Once I fixed the handle, I was able to continue the photoshoot. With the help of a classmate, I was able to capture great pictures of of the ladle in use and different grips of the handle.

After taking the pictures, I began constructing my posters. For the orthographic poster, I took the 2D drawings from Rhino, added the measurements, and edited and arranged them on Illustrator. For the illustrative poster, I created a skeleton on normal paper, however when I started arranging on Illustrator, I took a slightly different direction. I then printed out the posters in tiles in order to check how they would look physically. I made some minor changes and sent them to print.

Sketching the Logo

Right off the bat, I was focused on the accessible aspect of the ladle and my objective of making the process of cooking soup as warm and comforting as eating it. Therefore, I experimented with the shape of a heart, hands, and even tendons and bones to connect it with arthritis. After discussing with my professor, he suggested that instead of focusing on a heart shape and bones, I should focus on the ladle itself and the hands. Thus, I focused on making some sort of ladle-hand merge.

Graphics

Once I finished the first iterations, feedback from peers suggested that instead of only focusing on the thumb, I incorporate the entire hand enveloping the handle. So, I created a quick sketch and went back to Illustrator.

I brought in my logo to critique and many people pointed out that the logo was very long and it may be hard to incorporate text with it. Instead, it was suggested that I try to change the view of the ladle to a front view and incorporate a bowl, pot or soup to add some width. I brought my sketch into Illustrator and was planning on adding a pot, however, I realized that instead of adding an entire new factor, I could just create a circle and make it a soup.