SteadGrip
Ergonomic nail care for hands with limited grip: an oversized ridged cap that replaces the small factory cap on a polish bottle, and a nail file with a grip block, tested with older users.
- Category
- Hard Goods
- Year
- 2026
- Duration
- 4 weeks
- Role
- Solo
- Course
- RISD Industrial Design
- Tools
- Foam modeling, Clay, 3D printing, Rhino
- Materials
- Foam and clay form studies, 3D-printed prototypes
The problem
Painting or filing your own nails takes a pinch grip and steady fine control. For people with arthritis or reduced strength, a polish cap the size of a pencil eraser and a flat emery board are hard to hold and harder to control.
I set out to change the grip, not the routine: the same bottle and the same file, with a form that fits a whole hand.
Form studies
I made four grip forms in foam and clay, each glued to a file blank so they could be held and used: a rounded wedge, a trapezoidal block, a D-shaped handle with a finger slot, and a two-pronged saddle. Each one favors a different way of holding: pinch, overhand, fist, palm.
Testing
The cap
The polish cap took the saddle form: a ridged grip that a whole hand can close around, mounted on the bottle's own cap.