The empathy embodied in this invention is notable.

Mary Kenner was thinking not only about the mechanical problem but about the human experience of the people who would use the product — about what it felt like to need a walker, to be limited in one’s mobility, and to have the small indignity of not being able to carry one’s own cup of tea from the kitchen to the living room.

Invention that emerges from this kind of empathetic understanding tends to produce products that genuinely improve people’s lives rather than merely demonstrating technical cleverness.

Her fourth patent, U.S.