Research
Design
Co-creating Rain Protection for Wheelchair Users
Salvage Garden
About client
Salvage Garden is a Singapore-based community makerspace focused on assistive technology, low-cost bespoke solutions for persons with disabilities, and open-source hardware. It provides a participatory space built on self-driven, learning-by-doing principles.
Services
Research
Design
Project duration
3 months
Rain is a daily barrier for wheelchair users in Singapore. 55 Minutes and Salvage Garden set out to redesign weather protection grounded on real caregiving constraints and lived experience.
Challenge
Rain protection for wheelchair users is frequently treated as a solved problem. Umbrella holders and ponchos exist but they often fall short in practice. The deeper problem was not a lack of products, but a lack of design for the full system: user, caregiver, environment, and everyday unpredictability. For wheelchair users and caregivers navigating outdoors in the rain, a poorly designed product could genuinely compromise their safety.
Solution
A lightweight, collapsible, and adjustable poncho that was designed through three months of co-creation with Salvage Garden and caregivers, tested against six criteria: safety, ease of use, high coverage, adaptability, affordability and accessibility.
Results
A wheelchair poncho shaped entirely by real use
Every design decision in the final poncho prototype came directly from caregiver and user feedback, not assumption. Sleeves were removed when flagged as snagging risks. Bottom cords were added when full-length coverage posed safety risks on smaller wheelchairs. The hood was redesigned with a drawcord when stroke survivors with limited neck mobility reported discomfort. The result is a prototype that reflects the priorities caregivers and users actually expressed, with safety being the most important.
See the product specs and manual on how to use this product.
Simple by design, affordable by intent
As non-industrial designers, 55 Minutes did not default to complex mechanisms or purpose-built components. Instead, the team looked to familiar, everyday objects for structural inspiration — most notably, a baby stroller mosquito net, whose ribbed framework solved a structural and ventilation problem that no existing wheelchair rain solution had adequately addressed. This analogous inspiration approach mirrors Salvage Garden's core principle of finding possibility in what already exists. The result is a solution that is simple to replicate, affordable to produce, and grounded in real use, not just technically sound on paper.
Co-creation as sustained practice
The wheelchair poncho is not the outcome of a single workshop bolted onto the end of a project. The co-creation process is built into every stage. By involving caregivers from the very first ideation session through prototyping and testing, the team was able to identify and eliminate non-viable directions early, before time and resources were spent refining them. Within three months, this approach produced a tested, refined wheelchair poncho grounded in real use.
The wheelchair poncho is currently under production. If you are interested in getting one, we'd love to hear from you.
For a detailed account of the research, ideation, prototyping, and testing process, download the complete project report here.
