Concepts
In this part you can read how the ideas are generated. These ideas came up while discussing problems that the participant experiences in his daily life. After this the ideas are discussed and some of them are developed into concepts.
Idea Generation
After the first two co-design sessions with our participant it became clear that he did not necessarily have a wish in mind for a certain product or innovation. He seemed a very happy man that was content with his life. Therefore we looked into the activities, hobbies and problems that he has, in order to find a design direction. The participant joins activities at Plint, there a does activities that focus on creativity, ambitions and sporting. He likes to take part in sporting activities around four times a week which include lifting weights and rowing. His hobbies include ‘kegelen’, a form of bowling, and listening to Dutch music. There were also some issues that he faced in his daily life. For instance he had difficulty travelling by train, because he couldn’t easily enter the coupe. He also couldn’t enter certain buildings because they didn’t have wheelchair access or were to small. This includes certain shop and the local place for ‘kegelen’.
After these two interviews several ideas were conceived. We continued further research into these subjects to find design directions for the product for the participant. We will elaborate on these ideas below:
In this part you can read how the ideas are generated. These ideas came up while discussing problems that the participant experiences in his daily life. After this the ideas are discussed and some of them are developed into concepts.
Idea Generation
After the first two co-design sessions with our participant it became clear that he did not necessarily have a wish in mind for a certain product or innovation. He seemed a very happy man that was content with his life. Therefore we looked into the activities, hobbies and problems that he has, in order to find a design direction. The participant joins activities at Plint, there a does activities that focus on creativity, ambitions and sporting. He likes to take part in sporting activities around four times a week which include lifting weights and rowing. His hobbies include ‘kegelen’, a form of bowling, and listening to Dutch music. There were also some issues that he faced in his daily life. For instance he had difficulty travelling by train, because he couldn’t easily enter the coupe. He also couldn’t enter certain buildings because they didn’t have wheelchair access or were to small. This includes certain shop and the local place for ‘kegelen’.
After these two interviews several ideas were conceived. We continued further research into these subjects to find design directions for the product for the participant. We will elaborate on these ideas below:
Weighing scale
In the residential institution the subject lives there are weekly weighing moments for the residents but since our subject is the only one living there in a wheelchair they are not able to participate in this activity.
Interactive sports activity
Since the subject enjoys working out and doing sports the group had the idea to think of a new sports activity for the subject that they could carry out in their wheelchair.
Wheelchair umbrella
When our subject is outside the rain can be very unfortunate since the wheelchair is powered simply by hand so holding an umbrella is out of the option.
Listening to music
One of the hobbies of the subject is listening to their favourite music. They do this on their computer in their room which has a lot of downloaded music.
Travelling by train
The subject travels a lot with public transport, and mainly trains, to their activities and to their parents to visit over the weekend. The trains in The Netherlands have wheelchair ramps available at stations but the stations need to be informed ahead of time to make sure an employee is present to assist the subject with the ramp.
‘Kegelen’
The subject told the group that when before they lived in their current city they would go to play ‘kegelen’ once in a while, this is an activity very similar to bowling, but in their current city the location where this can be played is not accessible for our subject in their wheelchair.
Concept Development
After further research a decision was made together with the participant to continue with the idea of making a portable device that he could use to listen to music. Right now he listens music on his computer or on his parents iPad. This means he can’t listen to music outside or during the break of his daily activities. This is something he would like to do. That is why we started working on this concept idea.
We started with some rough ideation for designs. We looked at existing product that could be mounted on wheelchair and music players. We tried to find some middle ground between these concepts. We tried different shapes, buttons and screens. In the end we came up with two concepts which will be discussed in our design process.
Design process
Storyboards
Concept 1
Concept 2
Concept 1
Concept 2