We each went away and interviewed people we knew to get a better insight of caring for the elderly. This was really useful as it helped us to inform and improve our survey questions. On Wednesday the group (excluding myself due to a dentist appointment) went Melton Mowbray to an elderly community group for a focus group. In preparation for the group session I created a question prompt sheet so that we could extract the most relevant information. This was accompanied by visual prompts. We used this to ensure that we were on the same wavelength with the elderly in terms of style and functionality. We didn't want a product to be too function heavy or styled a certain way that didn't match the desires of the user, otherwise we would have a hard time implementing the product, making the concept quite useless. Primary Research ideas: > Find Care Services and get first hand observations and interviews from the elderly and carers. > Speak to carers about their biggest concerns looking after the elderly. > Speak to carers about the most time consuming tasks. We've been calling up and emailing carehomes, care services and care foundations in the hopes to gain some first hand research. So far most companies have been dismissive, but a few have passed us on to other companies which were also dismissive. Merging the Moodboard with the Mindmap. This was very useful in visualising all the points we spoke about in their related topic areas. It generated ideas, but didn't highlight the pros and cons of the devices. ANALYSING OUR FAVOURITE DEVICES
Before following through with your primary research you MUST inform yourself on the existing secondary research, otherwise it would be a waste of time. Thankfully, we hit the nail on the head in terms of project direction. Caring is a huge burden on the carer with an incredible amount of pitfalls financially, emotionally and physically.
Below are some statistics provided by CarerUK From this data, it is easy to distinguish that time spent caring is a huge reason many are struggling to earn as much working and keeping themselves and their family well. If we can look at ways to reduce time spent on caring tasks, it is likely that their health and financial stability can remain strong.
Looking into our moodboards, we noted different topic areas within Dementia using the Mindmap method. We had Melissa, a Student Nurse and experienced carer, help us with the process and distinguish key issues. This was useful to see the links between subject areas (linked by dotted lines).
Although the moodboards and Mindmap helped, they haven't pushed us down a distinctive issue area. I believe the best way for us to distinguish the project direction will be through our research. We had a range of moodboards of existing products and services. We used this as a way of stimulating idea generation and to see what issues had been tackled and in what way. Many products were quite weak in their design, functionally and aesthetically and didn't seem to address the need correctly/effectively. Other than being a bit of an ego-boost for us, I think this was beneficial as it helped us to establish an aim, that we all wanted a functional product as opposed to a concept as a goal.
How do you decide on a single direction when you all have different interests? Taking from the initiatives of IDEO and their Post-it Note obsession we went about generating potential project directions and their links to each other. These included ideas surrounding prenatal, Antenatal and postnatal care, such as the Embrace project (below), aimed at protecting babies from low temperatures leading to hypothermia. Pregnancy-related Education As many women giving birth are unable to reach a qualified health practitioner, there can be fatal consequences. One way of tackling this issue is in education. In educating soon-to-be mothers about how to give birth in a hygienic way, the risk of a fatal incident would be significantly reduced. There are many other issues surrounding pregnancy in low-income countries, these are just a couple of the many avenues we looked down. This project should be heavily primary research based and as such, we did not select this project. Interviewing, testing of designs, etc. would best be carried out in the selected countries. For more research we found on this topic follow this link to the a page of links and notes.
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introThis is a project I worked on collaboratively with 3 others. It focuses on bringing independence back to those suffering from Alzheimer's whom are unable to care for themselves. |