**5. Recommendations**

One key area of improvement is on the aspect of enhanced wheelchair comfort. Most wheelchairs should suit personalised seat dimensions and leg rest sizes. This could easily be incorporated into the wheelchair design.

A deeper ergonomic analysis should be conducted to improve the shapes of parts the user interacts with such as the armrests and the seating so that they provide enough comfort for long hours.

Leg supports can be added to assist in holding the user in standing posture so that they do not fall over. Also comfortable cushion material could be used for the seat and armrests such as foam padding. This can also be added to the leg supports so that the user is comfortable when standing up. The seat height at lowest elevation could be reduced to accommodate smaller body sized users.

Some considerations could be considered to change tubular material to reduce the weight of the chair. Titanium could be a good alternative to aluminium due


#### **Table 5.**

*Validation of customer requirements with the design.*

to its very high material strength with relatively lower weight. This change would increase the cost of the chair however and must be considered in the design.

To assist users who cannot use the remote control, future work can be done to use voice input commands to operate the wheelchair. Also some work can be done to link the wheelchair to the internet so that it can show locations, routes and report functionality levels of all parts thereby making it easy for maintenance of the wheelchair to be undertaken.
