Bond
8 Weeks
Personal Project
2025
Making recovery visible between clinic visits.
Bond is a removable monitoring attachment for existing forearm crutches, designed for people recovering from short-term lower-limb injuries.
By tracking patterns of hand-applied pressure and presenting them through a companion app, Bond helps users better understand changes in their everyday reliance on crutches.
Where it started
I began by trying to make stairs easier on crutches. To understand it first-hand, I spent a day on crutches across London: the Tube, the stairs, the lot.
The stair prototype didn’t work: [one reason]. But a later conversation with a crutch user changed the question: “[their actual words].”
In the clinic: a few minutes of assessment.
At home: weeks of recovery, waiting for the next appointment
Recovery happens every day. Feedback doesn't happen in between
How is physical recovery assessed?
Physiotherapists judge progress by watching how much weight goes through the injured leg, and how steadily someone walks.
The crutch is already measuring this. As the leg gets stronger, less weight goes through the crutch. Every step is a data point that’s currently lost.
Everyday crutch use may reveal changes in support.
Where should sensing live?
I compared four positions — cuff, handle, tip and insole — against [signal accuracy, comfort, fit with existing crutches]. The handle won because [ ]. A split architecture then [separates the grip from the electronics so ___ ].
These observations prompted a closer look at how sparkling water is prepared at home.
The flexible sleeve wraps around the existing grip and is secured using hook-and-loop fastening, without replacing the original crutch components.
Trends, not diagnoses.
Grip pressure changes with every step. Rather than displaying fluctuating raw readings as a recovery score, Bond presents longer-term patterns in everyday crutch use. The companion app also explores foot-movement consistency as supporting context. These observations are intended to improve awareness, not replace clinical assessment.
Design for Return
Once the recovery period ends, the attachment and crutch could be returned through a proposed collection service, allowing the equipment to be inspected, cleaned, refurbished where appropriate and reissued.
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