Why design a neck pillow?

• Increasing Neck Pain Population: Neck pain has an annual prevalence rate exceeding 30% among adults in the US; nearly 50% of individuals will continue to experience some degree of chronic neck pain or frequent occurrences. Among adults, 20% to 70% will experience neck pain that interferes with their daily activities during their lifetime (Statistics from Practical Pain Management Website, 2019).

• Acupuncture Point is a cure: Acupuncture points are the specific sites through which the Qi (气) of the meridians and Zang Fu organs (脏腑) is transported to the body surface.

We wanted to design a neck pillow that applies acupoint massage to effectively alleviate neck pain.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we provide effective massage and comfortable nap all together to travelers?

testing & iterations

mapping Acupuncture Points

We started with finding out important acupuncture point locations around the neck to guide the design of massage nodes.

Design from basics

We created a first iteration by adding desired features into generic neck pillow, and made assembly drawing for it. Then we showed the drawing to 10 random people on the street, and asked them 2 simple questions:

1. What do you like about this neck pillow?

2. What do you dislike about this neck pillow?

8 of the interviewees claimed that they like the massage function of this option, however we also found out that half of them think this design doesn’t give them enough control over the massage, thus might not be effective.

We also realized that the pillow bone in the soft neck pillow could move around, so the massage nodes are not going to focus on our designed acupuncture points. This defect will greatly weaken our design. In order to give user more control over the massage strength and increase massage accuracy, we decided to redesign the pillow bone.

prioritize design components

We exaggerated the pillow bone, and made it the main structure of the neck pillow. It has two massage handles, and the massage nodes are integrated parts of the pillow bone. As a result, the massage nodes can accurately press the three most important acupuncture points on neck side.

Although the pillow bone is designed according to ergonomics, and is going to be made in silicon, we still think the soft support pad need to be more designed. In order to get more feedback, we tested the prototype of second iteration on 10 person, and concluded their feedback into 4 points:

✔ Pillow base fits well with massage nodes touching neck

✔ Handle is comfortable to hold

✖ Neck pad is not comfortable enough

✖ The medicine pad should be replaceable

✖ Neck pad and pockets need to be added on the side

Based on the feedback, we moved on designing the third iteration.

finalizing parts

The third iteration is focused on improving the comfort level of the neck pillow by adding side cushions and redesigning the shape of the medicine pad at the back. We drafted a sketch of the third iteration, as shown below:

Then we listed a bill of materials for our product (see ab), and calculated the total cost of it to set a retail price. The total cost of our product is going to be $21.24, so we decided to set the retail price $45, thus have unit revenue of $31.5 and unit profit of $10.26.

Except from the 6 existing massage nodes on the side, by testing the second design iteration prototype on ourselves, we realized that there are two acupuncture points on the back where the pillow bone can also reach. While the side acupoints are effective to relieve neck-side muscles, the two on the back are effective to alleviate fatigue around shoulders.

The design of the cushions also applies ergonomics, hugging the back curve of our neck. These cushions are replaceable, it can be removed for cleaning purpose. They are designed to embed in the bone structure elegantly.

final prototyping

3d printing the bone structure

Using Maya & Rhino, we designed the organic form of the pillow bone. Due to the need of fast prototyping, we chose to 3D print the bone structure with PLA white filament. The prototype material will not have the same level of flexibility of the designed material - silicon, however it is possible to feel the massage with this prototype.

fabricating soft goods

The fabrication of the cushions especially the back cushion was much more complicated. I was responsible for designing and making the back cushion. I modeled it in Rhino, the form was shaped to fit human neck curvatures.

In order to make the cushion, I extracted main geometry curves from the massing, then I split the cushion into 30 parts with these curves, labeled each piece, and unrolled these pieces to prepare laser cut file.

Product Design Fair

We made it to the Wharton Product Design Fair 2019. We showed our product to over a hundred people, and got positive feedback from the audience.