Joint Effort

David Edquilang (’22) was an undergraduate in the University of Houston Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design when he sketched a device that could change hundreds of thousands of lives.

What’s more, he didn’t initially plan to create the now prize-winning device.

Rather, the story of Lunet — an easy-to-use, 3D finger prosthesis that doesn’t require metal fasteners or pricey tools to assemble — is a story of ingenuity, hard work and a student and professor racing to meet a patient’s need. It’s also the story of that student opting to make his design free to the public, rather than pursue the private market.

“My professor thought the project was in jeopardy. As a last resort, he told me, ‘Just do whatever you need to do to make it work.’ So, I did.”

It begins in 2021, with Edquilang’s side project.

“I was working on a prosthetic arm while another student was designing the hand,” Edquilang says. “Then, I started experimenting with some finger mechanisms in my free time, just to see what I could come up with.”

The humble Edquilang speaks in a soft voice, with every word seemingly chosen for a specific purpose. As he talks about his meticulous design process, his passion is evident.

After completing a design that he liked, he used a 3D printer to produce a prosthetic prototype and test its range of motion. With each iteration, he was pushing for more mobility, not settling for anything less than the 90-degree curvature human fingers can achieve.

That curvature is difficult to attain with a simple mechanism like the one he was trying to build; as he notes, some of the finger prostheses on the market have many more moving parts.

“At the end of two weeks,” Edquilang says, “I was pretty close.”

But he didn’t know all this work — a side project, mind you — was about to mean the world to one person. While Edquilang was busy iterating multiple finger prosthesis designs, his mentor, Associate Professor Jeff Feng, heard about a woman who had three fingers amputated due to frostbite. Feng is the co-director of UH’s industrial design program, and he took it upon himself to build the prosthesis this patient needed. The process was taxing: Roughly five months in, Feng and his original team didn’t have a working solution.

Enter Edquilang.

“My professor thought the project was in jeopardy,” he recalls. “As a last resort, he told me, ‘Just do whatever you need to do to make it work.’ So, I did.”

Edquilang, then a junior at UH, tested three sets of fully assembled prototype prostheses alongside the patient. They would meet so the patient could try on the device and test how it felt, then Edquilang would take her feedback and return to his work, making tweaks to fine-tune what would eventually become Lunet.

In total, they went through 60 different takes on the prosthesis, at one point even intentionally breaking the device to determine its weak point. (Spoiler alert: It was the distal knuckle, which connects the bones at the fingertips.) The break turned out to be exactly what Edquilang, the professors and the patient needed.

Even now, more than two years later, the memory is still fresh for Edquilang: the patient, trying on his creation and realizing they’d found a solution that worked perfectly. He was always confident, but he can’t deny that having his confidence validated was a weight off his shoulders.

“In those tests, you’re trying to solve fit, comfort and clearance,” he says. “I knew it was gonna work, so when it works, you just feel relief.”

Something happens when Edquilang reflects on his experience working with the patient. It’s not just passion; he comes alight in a way that even exceeds his clear love for the design process.

“Helping people has always been the primary goal.”

Perhaps that’s why he couldn’t stop fine-tuning Lunet, even after he graduated. By October 2022, Edquilang was a fresh UH graduate looking for his next big opportunity. He was reviewing his design portfolio one day when he started thinking about Lunet and how, in his eyes, it could be even better. He resumed his tweaks, and in fact, he is still refining more than a year later, even as this story is being written — and even after he’s won numerous awards.

In fall 2023, Edquilang and his mentor were recognized with a Red Dot: Luminary 2023 award, a prestigious design prize handed out in Singapore. Their product also received a Red Dot: Best of the Best award, along with two Paris Design awards and a Gold designation at the 2023 Spark Design Awards. As if that wasn’t enough, Edquilang’s creation is a runner-up for the 2023 James Dyson award, another preeminent design honor.

“David’s recent success in winning the most prestigious design awards across the world is the best manifestation of the unparalleled education and training students experience in our industrial design program,” Feng says.

For his part, Edquilang is deeply grateful for the recognition. These feats represent something far more important to him, though.

“Winning the awards is a way to protect the idea without patenting it,” he says. He has no plans to turn Lunet into a company or product, as doing so would only drive up the price for the people who need it most. Instead, after just a few more adjustments here and there, he plans to release the 3D files so anyone can download it, modify it and share their changes.

“Not every good idea has to be a business,” he says. “I want this to be eternal, and this way, it can be.”