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about the ovalness. That wasn’t obvious. When we were talking about it and you sketched it out, actually, when it’s symmetrical, it’d be better if it’s like this so I could get down. It also makes it look nice. We never would have come up with that. But the fact that you used it and you said, “That would make sense.” That was where the beauty came from.
So, you get these designs; they can clip on. But then what we also had to do was.–So, we had different cov- ers. This is what locks you into the sleeve, and this is the blank sleeve itself. It opens up and your arm goes in there. These covers, our original ones, weren’t strong enough to keep you in when you were weight-bearing. Your arm would slip out. We developed these extra sports bands, which I know you’ve got a bunch of.
Grazian: I do. I’m not going anywhere. (laughs)
Macabuag: No, they’re cool. So I like that. It’s like a skelaton, right? That’s how I would have it. I think it’s quite cool. So we had to develop those. And the other thing we had to do was we have internal foam, which supports your limbs, like a foam mattress. Which actual- ly, funny enough, you know a lot about as well. And when we came to your house, you’ve been experiment- ing with different foams.
Grazian: (laughs) Yeah. Denser foams because I was finding that, even when I should be even, I was sinking into the foam. And so, you can really go down a foam rabbit hole. And I actually worked at a mattress compa- ny for a while. There’re so many foams. There’s density and pressure relieving. My husband and I actually creat- ed a little cylindrical support of really dense foam made of the stuff that’s like wall insulation, and that worked really well. And then for some more pressure relieving, we popped on a little thing that Koalaa sent, a little coin of foam on top of that so that I could have the pressure relief, but also the support and density. But that was before they created the new one.
Macabuag: And that was our starting point, from what you had. How could we recreate that? I went through thousands of foam. We had to tweak the internal density of the foam. Essentially it’s like a package that’s modu- lar. You can use each individually. You can tweak the density there and do all these kinds of things. I think it’s so—the process I thought was quite fun. As an engineer, I quite enjoyed it, working with you to try this, tweak this. And you end up on something that’s a little bit unique and has a personality because the people behind it are not in a lab somewhere. It’s actually got a heart.
Grazian: I like that! (laughter) It does have a heart! Macabuag: I like it!
Kaplan: That’s pretty cool. Has Koalaa always been
foam-based? Were there other attempts you worked through, like suction, other kinds of ways to get into Koalaa?
Macabuag: All of the above. Two things. I’m a very simple person. I’m not super-smart, so I have to try things over and over to iterate something. We also real- ized really early on that I don’t wear prosthetics, so my opinion just doesn’t really matter. You just have to make prototypes and give them to someone to use and just lis- ten humbly to the feedback. And most of the time, the longest time, the feedback was, “This is crap. It just doesn’t work.” And that’s fine, that’s fun because you get to iterate it. We went through all kinds of things.
At first, we didn’t make arms longer than someone’s arm. We always ended the sleeve where someone’s arms ended because we thought that gave you better control over whatever you were doing. Then when we were faced with yoga, you have to be balanced. How will we do that? We had to extend the sleeve. And if we extend it, what will we fill it with? We tried rigid stuff that’s uncomfortable. We tried soft stuff, but then it’s too squishy. We had to try all kinds of things. We’ve never properly done suction, yet, because it’s fabric. We have tried with those kind of suction liners, the ones you roll on. We’ve tried with those. They have the pin locks in the end. But because this is kind of fabric-y itself, it kind of in a way acts as its own liner. So, we’re always trying stuff. We’re always iterating. If you check back in a year, it will be different. (laughs) It’ll be a little bit better.
Kaplan: So, you’re always trying to work on it. What are the plans for the future of Koalaa?
Macabuag: Basically, what we’ve realized is that around the world, there are about 21 million people with upper limb differences of some sort. And 93% of those people get nothing at all. They don’t get some- thing and then decide it sucks, they just get nothing. So, there’s a massive challenge to just make as many of these available to as many people as possible. Not to prescribe them, not to make them necessary, but to make them available so if they want to engage in an activity, they can. It’s about scale and reaching as many people as possible. This is why generally it’s really helpful to ask for all of us together. It’s awareness of letting people know we exist because for a very long time prosthetics have been a stigmatized medical device. I think we think it’d be nicer if it moved into something that’s more like—well, actually like this. It’s just part of your gym equipment. It’s just a thing that you wear to do a certain thing, to move into a sort of health fitness kind of space. So, that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to be doing loads more sports, loads more activities, and in loads more parts of the world. And we want to work with anyone and everyone, including you, George, to just do that
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