TEAM SWEDEN

Team Sweden. Foto: Claire Dennington

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Concept: DAYS OF OUR LIVES!

During one day there is a huge amount of situations that just follow the same old routine as usual or are frustrating to carry out. This counts for me, for you and for PO Bengtsson, our expert user. What gives us the lust to continue with repeating the next twenty-four hours in our lives? We have chosen to analyze 24 hour of PO’s life to find those situation which contribute to passion of life instead of focus on frustrating situations which can be solved with a good functional solution.

”It is hard to tie the shoes, however better shoelace will not make it more fun to carry out.”
”I like cooking, but it can always works easier and better”

Background
The team’s inspirations on how to tackle the 24 hour challenge started immediately after arriving to the workshop at the Norwegian design centre. Our expert user, PO, product developer with over fifty years experiences of using a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest and down, was visiting the handicap toilette. He had to be assisted to open the door because of the weight and handle’s function. Additionally it was difficult to lock the door because the size of the door lock, too small to give him a good torque. When he got in to the room he couldn’t find any cloth hook. The design of the soap dispenser was ideal, however one needed a lot of force to push the button, and the consequence for PO was that he had to wash his hands without any soap. This was just the first of examples of many that PO mediated to the rest of the team during the 24 challenge and one of many examples of everyday stories that inspired the team. What’s interesting with this particularly story is that there are solutions for the described problems on the market but they are not applied in the environment or can be applied in a not very helpful way. This occurrence made us curious to explore if this circumstances is evident for all obstacle that PO meets in his every day living.

Design process
The team started with a workshop, aimed to get understanding, where the team followed PO through a single day activities. He described what he does during an average day and how he manages to carry out different activities. PO has a spinal cord injury (C6-C8) which consequence is that PO have problem to fully use both arms and legs. With one of the hands PO can manage to carry out a grip between his tumb and the rest of the hand, however it is a very weak grip. The other hand is only used as support. He highlighted some activities that is difficult and where no good solutions are available today. After listen to a 24 hour story of PO’s life the rest of the team members chose different problem areas to solve, by making sketches and models. These were continuously discussed, tested and developed together with PO. When the problem was solved for him in a satisfied way, the team members adjusted it to work for people with other disabilities or with normal function.

The design direction
Since we many times during the 24 hour story of PO’s life got back to the question that there are a lot of solution out there on the marked to solve functional frustrations, even if they some times not are organized as they were intentionally designed. We discussed that our work maybe is to design a handbook for those professions that are not into the inclusive design thinking but have a huge impact on how the thinking is implemented into society; like landlords, house owners, carpenters, painters and plumbers. During the creative process our design direction took another track. There are solutions which make live to work, however what is the reason behind why we continue to repeat our 24 hours circle? Lust, desire and passion of lives. In POs life it is cooking, so we decided to focus on activities that would help PO to carry out his passion of live. Shopping, fill the refrigerator, preparing the food and to enjoy the meal, alone or with friends.