Second Skin | Alexahaenel 1

My role:

-Product Designer

-Ergonomic Analyst

-Surface and Grip Engineer

-Adhesive Developer

Objectives:

Develop nearly invisible protection high abrasion zones of wheelchair athletes hands

Tools:

-Figma

-Indesign

-Procreate

-Rhino

-Keyshot

Timeline:

Fall 25'

10 weeks

**This project, Second Skin, has been invited for publication in IDSA Innovation Magazine (Spring 2026), recognizing its original design research.**

Click here to see my full Figma board

Zone mapping the hand helps reveal exactly where wheelchair athletes experience the most friction, pressure, and breakdown. By tracing high abrasion regions like the heel of the palm, the lateral thumb pad, and the proximal finger joints, you can clearly see the patterns of repeated impact created during pushes, turns, and braking. This map is the foundation for targeted protection, ensuring that only the areas that truly need reinforcement receive it while preserving natural feel and mobility everywhere else.

Creating an empty empathy map helped me focus on what athletes truly see, feel, and struggle with before I began designing. It grounded my direction and guided key decisions throughout the project.

Defining my design language.

Design starts with empathy. When you fully inhabit the user’s perspective and their frustrations you’re able to craft solutions that authentically meet their needs. The more intimately you understand their struggles and triumphs, the more capable you are of creating meaningful solutions for them.

I started with the local PNW adaptive athlete drop-in, where I met Dani (pictured to my right). Truly playing the game of wheelchair basketball gave me a much clearer understanding of who I was designing for. I then met with several collegiate wheelchair basketball athletes at UIUC, gaining insight into the sport at a higher level. Lastly, I connected with the Portland Wheel Blazers professional team (a few of their hands depicted below), where I was able to dive deeper into their hand challenges, struggles, and get real user testing feedback.

My form exploration began by cutting shapes from latex gloves and placing them directly onto the hand to better understand and visualize athletes abrasion zones. I then iterated through several forms to see what shapes could be combined, contoured, or removed entirely.

This hands-on exploration let me rapidly test coverage strategies, isolate essential zones, and build a visual library of forms that could eventually evolve into a refined, skin-like adhesive system.

Screenshot 2025-12-09 at 12.49.43 PM.heic

Ideate. cut. test. revise. repeat.

Increments of iterations viewed on hand to understand scale, size, proportion, and comfort

Protecting the upper areas of the palm abrasions that occur miscellaneously when pushing or stopping the chair

Protecting the side of the pointer and middle finger abrasions that occur when an athlete grabs just the push rim of their chair

Protecting the lower palm and thumb area abrasions that occur when an athlete grabs their wheel and push rim together when propelling themselves

revise. reshape. rework. improve. repeat.

Building on the athlete-tested designs to create a more athletic, visually appealing, and cohesively unified collection that feels intentional, refined, and athlete driven.

The adhesive is specially designed with tiny channels that allow sweat to move out from under the patch, preventing moisture from getting trapped against the skin. By continuously releasing sweat as the athlete plays, these channels reduce edge lift, maintain a stronger bond, and help the patch stay securely in place through intense friction and repeated pushes.

Intention behind the Directional Grip:

The Leading Edge Coefficient

The directional micro-grip structure on Second Skin is designed to interact with outer surfaces the same way optimized tread interacts with a hardcourt surface. Research in shoe surface tribology shows that friction is movement dependent, and orientation and shape matter far more during dynamic motion than static contact. Inspired by this, Second Skin uses a field of angled micro elements that increase friction when the hand initiates a push yet release smoothly at the end of the stroke. Their orientation manages frictional forces the same way tennis tread does during slides, boosting grip when the athlete needs propulsion and reducing drag when they need quick, clean disengagement.