Design Challenge
Evolvement
Our design vision is to create a meaningful product that tackles a core problem that the target group and specific user experience. The product should help them in their daily life and create opportunities within the context that the product is designed for. The design challenge is what aids in the creation of a design direction during the design process. Throughout the course of this project, our design challenge evolved in response to new information.
Storyboard
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Getting thirsty and going to get a drink.
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Goes to the fridge to grab their favorite drink.
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Tries to open the bottle with difficulty.
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After many tries, the bottle is finally opened.
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After getting the drink, tries to close the bottle with difficulty.
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After many tries, the bottle is finally closed.
The participant opening a twistcap
Evolvement reasoning
"Communication and making themselves verbally understood, being independent and not relying on others to help them perform ‘simple’ actions, and keeping the (physiotherapy) training fun to do."
"Increase the ease of opening and closing of certain objects, for the participant to gain as much independence in this context as possible."
"Design a product that increases the ease of opening and closing food related products that require fine motor skills and applied force."
“Design a system to ease the process of extracting the contents from a drinking container and sealing the container."
Based on the context mapping study and the meetings with the participant, we got to know them and their struggles in their daily life, but also struggles with things that they like to do, but are not able to due to their condition. So, together with the participant, we came up with multiple different design challenges, to make their life a bit easier. This led to designing challenge 1, which can be found below. We want to select the best-suited design challenge in consultation with our participant and specify that one further.
We visited the participant physically and performed multiple Co-Design methods to get even more insight in their struggles. During that meeting, we found out that for instance opening a window is hard for them. After that meeting, we asked the participant to notify if they encounter any problems during daily activities over a couple of days. After five days, the participant sent us an email with a new problem they encountered. The participant said that they struggled with opening a twistcap especially when it has never been opened. We were very enthousiastic about this and as this is about opening and closing object. We still wanted to include the problem of opening a window, as this combines the fine muscle coordination with having to apply force. This led to the second design challenge.
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Based on design challenge 2, we did research into twist caps, current solutions for this problem and we asked for more details of the participant about the struggle. We concluded that we would not be able to make a product which could open and close object, and we had to specify the design challenge further. This led to design challenge 3, in which we focus purely on opening and closing food related products to make sure we make a good working product for only one categorie, instead of a fine working product for all objects.
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After we formulated the third design challenge, we started ideating and visited the participant again. We tried multiple types of handles and came to new insights about what the actual problem is that causes the struggle. We concluded that the participant cannot use their fingers to apply fine muscle coordination and force, but can use their handpalm for this. We presented our findings and ideation to three other groups, two design experts and one project coordinator. Their feedback and the new findings and conclusion led to the final design challenge. We want to concentrate on drinks specifically, because it is most relevant to the participant, since drinking products are the only ones the participant uses on his own. Food-related products have bigger lids and are therefore easier to open for them. Besides that, breakfast, lunch and dinner is prepared by the assistents.