It Can Always Be Better – Sabrina L.

Hello, Hello Hello all. If you’ve been keeping up with our blog you can see that we have been working tirelessly on research that will help us to try to improve all aspects of a breast pump that might hinder the working women after she has a child. And we have finally gotten to the point in our research where we were able to pick a base model, which was the only current breast pump model that was close to our design, so we knew that we wanted to build off of and improve this design.

The first step, which was in my opinion the most complicated since I was fixed on one idea, that we took was creating sketches of three designs that we each believed were good modifications to the original hands free breast pump design. We all had around similar ideas of how we over all wanted the pumps too look like since we all had come to a consensus of having five major points that we wanted to incorporate into our design; 1.) mimic baby’s suckling 2.) milk storage 3.) visability 4.) comfort 5.) hands free. To us these are the top five most important features because of our goal of making a breast pump that the working mom could use during work without worrying about it being very noticeable. Though the use of this pump does not have to be limited to the workplace, we want mothers to be able to use this pump even when they are out shopping or running errands.

A common design that we had that incorporated these features was a breast pump that had a bra connected to it. We believed that if we had a bra of our own to give to the mothers then they would not have to worry about the potential to ruin one of their own bras. Though we realized  that this also poses the problem of us needing to manufacture our own sizes but, we feel that this would be a good investment into the bra. Another common design that we agreed on is that we should store the milk in a “fanny pack” like bag so that was the milk can go to a less conspicuous container that the mother can just carry around without much worry. And perhaps the most complicated common design that we had was that we all feel that it would be best to have the breast pump controller be separate from the pump and small so that way the mother can just slip it into her pocket or purse.

Though these are just our ideas separated, we do plan on collaborating further down the line and combining some ideas from one with the others to find a way to best improve the hands free breast pump. But it is also very important to us that our future consumers (hopefully you lovely people reading our blog) have a say and make their voices heard about this matter, so please tell us your opinion and what you think about our ideas and whether you like or dislike them.