Rhodes
Retire in safety and comfort
Rhodes is a door handle with a patented emergency access system designed for the Baby Boomer population reaching retirement age. As many people are beginning to retire, they are frequently concerned with preparing their home to accommodate future health ailments that will develop with age. I was part of a design team working with Schlage that created Rhodes to fill this gap in the market.
Research
After reviewing medical journals, interviewing users, and interviewing physical therapists, we agreed upon the particular age-related problems that we wanted to focus on.
We deemed that it was best to focus on addressing pain caused by arthritis and providing easier access in emergencies without compromising privacy.
Ideation
We dove into sketching to explore what functionalities can be added to increase the safety of the users that also relied upon previously learned behaviors to reduce the amount of re-learning required to use the product.
Safety + privacy
The unlocking mechanism has a widened opening that removes the need for the traditional emergency key pin. This allows any keys, whether they’re house keys or car keys, to be used to open the door in the event of an emergency. Additionally, this opening still works with the traditional “grenade pin” design if desired. This can save crucial moments when trying to get to loved ones who have injured themselves and are unable to open the door.
The surrounding plating on the interior door handle has a switch integrated into the frame for users to unlock from the interior.
Anthropometrics
Using data gathered from user testing and human factors resources. We designed the panel to be reachable for every percentile. Due to the average woman’s height being shorter than the average man, we designed with them in focus to determine the minimum panel length.
