24 hours is a long time to be working, especially on a tough subject and in a genuinely participatory setting. Still, for the three teams that made up the 24hr Design Challenge participants on the 13th and 14th of July this is exactly what they did.<\/p>\n
The Design Challenge ran across the first two days of the 2015 Design4Health conference, including both conference delegates and people who applied to take part solely for the challenge. The three teams were made up of designers, clinicians and\u00a0Design Partners\u00a0<\/em>– people who have lived experience of Parkinson\u2019s Disease (the theme of this year\u2019s Design Challenge).<\/p>\n Parkinson\u2019s Disease, and especially some of the symptoms associated with it are not well understood amongst the general populace. The involuntary movements that some suffer from can be mistaken for drunkenness (as reiterated by one of the Design Partners);\u00a0Freezing<\/a>\u00a0is stigmatising and distressing, and while not all who live with Parkinson\u2019s suffer from this it\u2019s effect cannot be understated; the\u00a0slowness<\/a>\u00a0associated with Parkinson\u2019s is frustrating and upsetting; and the darker side of compulsive behaviour that some face is hidden from the public\u2019s grasp of the disease. In short, Parkinson\u2019s Disease presents significant challenges for a person to live with- including of course their nearest and dearest.<\/p>\n This is why in this challenge, the views of people living with Parkinson\u2019s\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>those who care for someone who does were involved. Each team had two Design Partners \u2013 one who lived with the disease and one who cared for that person.<\/p>\n As well as the lived experience of Parkinson\u2019s Disease, it was of course necessary to include the professional experience of clinicians who work with the disease. As such, two clinicians were interviewed in order to write the briefing document for the event (many thanks to Joanne Rose, Parkinson\u2019s Disease Nurse Specialist and Paula Howland, Co-Team Lead of the Care Homes Service- both at Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust), with two clinicians taking part in the challenge.<\/p>\n The designers for the teams came from a multitude of countries \u2013 hailing from India, The Netherlands, Italy (and the UK, amongst others!) \u2013 adding additional essential viewpoints.<\/p>\n With any challenge good leadership is a must. In this regard, we were very fortunate indeed to have three very talented designers leading the teams. Ben Mortimer, Design Manager at\u00a0Nestl\u00e9<\/a>\u00a0came from York to lead a team; John Bateson of\u00a0Bateson Studio<\/a>\u00a0came from London; and Valerie Carr, Creative Director and Lead Service Designer at\u00a0Snook<\/a>\u00a0came from Glasgow.<\/p>\n Whenever an event such as this is hosted, the quality of the outputs has to be seen to be believed. It is truly amazing to see what can happen in 24 hours, and it is testament to the hard work of all of the attendees that the project outputs were of such high quality (as evidenced by the nearly two hour discussion by the judges!).<\/p>\n Highlighted below are the Teams, and their projects.<\/p>\n Emily Boniface,\u00a0Peter MacQueen,\u00a0Luke Davis,\u00a0Ross Taylor,\u00a0Sharon Kerr & Duncan Kerr (Design Partners),\u00a0Kyoko Murata,\u00a0Amina Pereno,\u00a0Matt Simms,\u00a0Sudhakar Nadkarni,\u00a0Anuja Agarwal, Paula Howland (Clinician), and\u00a0Ben Mortimer (Team Lead).<\/em><\/p>\n Team 1 came up with a low-cost concept to help manage Freezing \u2013 by taking a genuinely Inclusive approach to design they created a product that has applications beyond Parkinson\u2019s alone \u2013 the product is directly applicable to athletes. Team 1 created Pace \u2013 a personal metronome, easily configured by the user \u2013 with even the packaging and branding designed by the team in 24 hours. Part of the presentation included the video below.<\/p>\n Team 1 won the Kyoto Design Lab Innovation Prize.<\/p>\n Jessica Fox,\u00a0Lynn Telford & Rick Telford (Design Partners),\u00a0John Bateson (Team Lead),\u00a0Igor Dydykin,\u00a0Penny Tiffney,\u00a0Nick Dulake,\u00a0L\u00edgia Lopes,\u00a0Lee Credgington, and\u00a0Sandy Walker (not pictured –\u00a0Ragini Mohanty)<\/em><\/p>\n Team 2 took a markedly different direction from the other two teams, in that they designed an experience \u2013 a piece of service design that slowed the pace of certain activities.\u00a0Slowness<\/a>\u00a0is one of the main symptoms of Parkinson\u2019s, and at a supermarket checkout, busy caf\u00e9, or airport security (to name a few examples) this causes significant anxiety and stigma. SlowGo is a service with a brand that is independent of supermarket providers, caf\u00e9s and airport security operators \u2013 a service provider that is subscribed to by those operators to entice people who appreciate having a bit more time to complete these tasks.<\/p>\n SlowGo is inclusive \u2013 it benefits families with toddlers, people with disabilities, older people, or even just people who don\u2019t feel like rushing.<\/p>\n SlowGo won the JRI Orthopaedics Judge\u2019s award for the innovative approach shown over the 24hr Design Challenge.<\/p>\n Charlotte MacRae,\u00a0Thomas Fisher,\u00a0Laura Malan,\u00a0Valarie Carr (Team Lead),\u00a0Hester van Zuthem,\u00a0Heath Read, Claire Keeley (Clinician),\u00a0Chris Iveson,\u00a0Ali Finlayson, and\u00a0Jane Finlayson (Design Partners)<\/em><\/p>\n Team 3 developed PulsePal, a hardware \/ software combination that aimed to improve the self-management of Freezing for those who live with Parkinson\u2019s. It is testament to the problem that freezing poses that two of the three teams competing chose to focus on it!<\/p>\n The hardware proposed by Team 3 included a technology to gently squeeze the wearer\u2019s arm (simulating a person\u2019s grip), as well as vibrate. The device pairs with a smartphone, allowing customisation of the vibration strength and frequency, as well as being able to record ancillary information about freezing incidents\u2026 to allow the wearer to sport patterns.<\/p>\n Team 3 won the Devices for Dignity People\u2019s Choice award \u2013 voted for by the delegates of the\u00a0Design 4 Health<\/a>\u00a0conference.<\/p>\nTeam 1 \u2013 Pace<\/strong><\/h2>\n
Team 2 \u2013 SlowGo<\/h2>\n
Team 3 \u2013 PulsePal<\/h2>\n