Contrast Therapy Device
UC Berkeley MEng’s first student-led capstone project
Teammates: Jakob Kraiger and Zachary Christiansen
Each UC Berkeley Master of Engineering (MEng) cohort participates in Capstone projects. These projects are usually proposed by industry partners or UC Berkeley faculty. This year, however, students were allowed to initiate their own projects—I am so excited that my project became the first student-pitched Capstone project!
I created a project proposal, pitched the project to faculty and fellow students, recruited teammates, found a project advisor, and made project timelines. I spearheaded the customer discovery process and outlined our business strategy while performing research and technical tasks with my teammates.
It has been exciting to allow my entrepreneurial spirit to come alive during this project. As a team, we have participated in start-up programs at UC Berkeley, such as NSF I-CORPS training, the Step Program, and Start-Up Disco.
The Fung Institute wrote an article about our project: How a dancer’s personal experiences influenced the first student-initiated capstone project
Project Background
Alternating cooling and heating treatment (known as contrast therapy) effectively increases blood flow, reduces muscle stiffness, increases muscle elasticity, and relieves pain [1]. It also has reduced ratings of fatigue when compared to active recovery protocols in athletes [2]. Although there is evidence for the benefits of contrast therapy above other modes of recovery, we found a market gap in devices making this treatment affordable and easy to perform at home. We learned from our interviews that even when recommended by doctors and physical therapists, there is low compliance in patients due to the burdensome nature of achieving contrast therapy.
Our device will make contrast therapy effortless - inviting and empowering people to make time for recovery and self-care.
This year we worked through 4 phases:
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1. Identify
Identifying an opportunity for a new product.
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2. Understand
Determine the opportunity’s characteristics and constraints.
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3. Ideate
Ideate and choose a final product and concept
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4. Prototype
Bring the product to life!
Identify
To identify existing opportunities for a new product, we examined social, technological, and economic factors that are relevant to our product. For example, a relevant technological factor is that Peltier technology has become less expensive in recent years, making it more accessible. An important, relevant social factor is that more and more people find it important to make time for self-care. Thermal therapies such as icing and heating are becoming more mainstream - from the elite athlete to the gym-goer.
In this phase, we also outlined a variety of relevant stakeholders, from athletes and weekend warriors to orthopedic surgeons and physical therapists.
Lastly, we researched extensively to understand heating and cooling therapies further and started modeling our thermal system to learn about our energy requirements.
Understand
During the “understand” phase, we dove further into background research, customer interviews, and modeling.
We consulted more specific literature on the beneficial effects of contrast therapy and thermoelectric devices for on-skin applications and performed market research to identify competitors. We interviewed many specialists (such as Physical Therapists and Orthopedic Surgeons) and sporty individuals (such as athletes, dancers, and gym-goers). Overall, we interviewed over 60 people.
Lastly, we bought a competitor product and tested it to analyze its drawbacks so we could create something better.
Below is a summary of our findings.
Important Metrics and Findings
90% of the Physical Therapists we interviewed recommend contrast therapy for injury and workout recovery. However, there is not a consensus on time intervals (amount of time in hot and amount of time in cold) among professionals. Most Physical Therapists expressed great concern with injury occurring during thermal therapies.
40% of people doing contrast therapy at home use an ice pack and a heating pad in a localized region. The rest use alternating hot and cold showers, ice massages, socks filled with rice heated in the microwave, or full body immersion.
82% of gym-going students have bought a product for workout recovery. Many spent on average $30-$50 on recovery products. This mostly includes massage balls, foam rollers, tiger balm, ice packs, and protein powder.
A large majority (~80%) of gym-going students have never heard of contrast therapy but 90% of them have used icing or heating in the past to relieve pain, recover from injury, or recover from a workout.
Many student-athletes, trainers, and coaches discussed the desire to perform contrast therapy on the go. Most student-athletes have facilities where full-body immersion in hot and cold baths is possible, however, there is a desire for a portable alternative for use during traveling.
Among Physical Therapists and athletes there were often discussions about not only alleviating muscle and joint pain but finding and treating the root cause. For example, by performing corrective exercises to address muscle imbalances.
A customer journey map for a hockey player using contrast therapy to treat an ankle injury. There are many customer pain points to address such as the messiness of a wet ice pack and frustration from switching devices.
As mentioned, we interviewed a variety of stakeholders - including athletes, sporty amateurs, physical therapists and orthopedic surgeons. Our user empathy map summarizes our findings. Physical Therapists recommend contrast therapy for recovery and healing of tissue but patients find it difficult to achieve.
From our competitive analysis we have found that there is a market gap in devices that are able to both provide heating and cooling and are portable.
Conceptualize
In this phase, we chose a final product and concept.
First, we created hardware specifications informed by user research and customer personas. Some of our essential hardware specifications include:
- Device must be able to reach temperatures of 45C and 15C
- Device must have a temperature sensor to monitor on-skin temperature
- Device must be programmable. User must be able to specify number of minutes in hot, number of minutes in cold, and number of cycles in each.
We used many brainstorming methods to develop concepts independently and through sprints together.
We met to gather our concept sketches and discuss our ideas. We grouped them in various ways to see similarities and differences and used Dot-Voting and Borda-Count methods to match each other’s preferences. Here are images of Jakob and Zach during this meeting!
Prototype
Here is where we brought our product to life!
From our conceptualizing phase, there were a few concepts we chose to explore further. Due to the constraints of our Capstone project, we decided to prototype our most feasible design to present at the Capstone showcase.
We created a prototype GUI using LabView and used an array of thermoelectrics programmed on a microcontroller to achieve our desired temperature changes.
To the right is a rendering of our prototype. The rendering shows four Peltier devices cooled with a heat sink and fan in an array on a flexible pad.
References
[1] Kim, J., Jung, H., & Yim, J. (2020). Effects of Contrast Therapy Using Infrared and Cryotherapy as Compared with Contrast Bath Therapy on Blood Flow, Muscle Tone, and Pain Threshold in Young Healthy Adults. Medical science monitor : international medical journal of experimental and clinical research, 26, e922544. https://doi.org/10.12659/MSM.922544
[2] Mark G. S., Angela M. C. & Jo G. S. (2011) Effect of whole-body contrast-water therapy on recovery from intense exercise of short duration, European Journal of Sport Science, 11:4, 293-302, 10.1080/17461391.2010.512365