Forgotten Afghanistan

We stumbled upon a New York Times online feature on Gloriann Liu, a professional photographer, who was working on a project based in Afghanistan. The project featured was "Forgotten Afghanistan," which focused on telling the stories of the Afghan people who are suffering from the aftermath of bombs and rockets that have fallen. The pictures feature the lives of disabled victims in Afghanistan. Her photos are followed by the their personal story on their accident and daily routine.

We purchased the book in hopes that it will help gain more insight on the difficulties that arise in living with a disability. It should shine some light on hidden difficulties we wouldn't normally notice with their culture, daily lives, and personal challenges. Since we cannot take a trip to Afghanistan anytime soon, the book can help enlighten us.

New York Times online feature

A look into Gloriann Liu's "Forgotten Afghanistan"

Beginning of Concepts and Mock Ups

So after the presentation or our research and analysis, we individually set out to create concepts and concepts for prosthesis. On February 13, we came together we posted our concepts and began building upon each others' ideas and giving critiques. Our plan is to continue diverging in this manner, mixing and matching different approaches and strategies that might work for amputees in Afghanistan. During this brainstorm and critique session we made some initial mock ups and prototypes to visualize how some of our concepts would function. As we continue to do this we are to formulate a mission statement and project brief specific to our country and start thinking about some plausible business models to present on Monday February 18, as well as our progress to date.

Initial Research Brainstorming

Once given a project brief we set out to do some research by gathering information and images to begin brainstorming some ideas. We were to gather this information for a in-class presentation on Feb.6 to show our findings and analysis on amputees, the country and prosthesis in general, along with other related material.

 Here is just some of what we learned:
-Amputees and disabled people are typically marginalized from society
- Majority of access to fitted prosthesis comes from the ICRC.
- If access to prosthesis is not available or known amputees go without prosthesis or use a makeshift crutch or something of the like to move about.
- The country has a high unemployment rate and very low literacy rate
- The terrain
-Children need frequent adjustments or replacements but cannot
- Proper fit is important for prosthesis to prevent any pulling on skin or other.
- Followers of Islam(which is the majority) in the country pray 5 times a day


From the research we analyzed that some of the hurdles we we may face is distribution, particularly is some of the more rural areas. We also realized that our concept will have to take the lifestyle and customs of the people and the terrain into consideration. The research was helpful in showing us some of the constraints this particular will pose for us when it comes to manufacturing, distribution, and our overall business model.

Project Introduction

Hello everyone. We are industrial design students from San Jose State University. This will be the first official post for this blog and there's quite a bit of catching up we need to do. So let's start off with the whole reason we are starting this blog.

For our senior capstone our class received a project brief to develop prosthesis for amputee children (not excluding adults) for $30. The project will focus on countries with the highest concentrations of land mine victims. As a class we split up into 3 teams, each focusing on a specific country; Cambodia, Columbia, and Afghanistan. This blog will document team Afghanistan as we work to come up with a highly viable prosthesis solution suitable for our country, a possible business model for manufacturing and distribution, and ultimately, as a class, launch a website for this project.

 

This site highlights the building and repair of the current infrastructure. Specifically, it shows different maps of the country.
https://www.irp-af.com/?pname=gallery_view&gallery=maps