n3rd

Check out the talk by Nic Rysenbry (N3RD) and Gregor Timlin about a year long study funded by Bupa and the Helen Hamlyn Center into care for older people with Dementia in Care.


Design for Dementia from Helen Hamlyn Centre on Vimeo.

Within the care setting, the bedroom is the one place that can be identified as a person’s own. It is a place of refuge where identity is reinforced through familiar objects and environmental cues. It is an oasis within the care community, the importance of which can have incalculable value to residents, family and friends. The bedroom provides carers with a constant reminder that where they work is where another lives. It is also a place where people right across the spectrum of ability must be supported in carrying out a wide range of daily living tasks.

One of the Outputs of the study

See more of the project here

Wellbeing and self-esteem are linked to personal appearance. In short, looking good can help you feel good and retaining one’s identity through appearance can be a positive experience for a resident as well as portraying a positive image to others. Dressing is a fundamental activity of daily living and the gradual loss of this ability by care residents can be very stressful and frightening.

The Wardrobe
The wardrobe is the hub for dressing and should provide care and support for longevity of use at every stage of dementia.

1. Height Reduction and Accessibility
According to research by Renray Healthcare, the average height of a person in care is 5 ft 3 ins. This makes traditional wardrobe heights inaccessible, compounded by age-related stiffness and other physical ailments. A significant proportion of residents will also be in a wheelchair at some point. Full-height wardrobes contain many inaccessible features based purely on the height. Lower areas can be just as inaccessible for older people. The wardrobe has been split into daily use (the doors) and seasonal use (the bottom drawers). The latter is explained further below.

2. Colour and Materiality
A combination of two contrasting materials helps those with sight problems to understand where to interact with the product. Use of good quality hardwood laminates creates variations in surface texture; they are also hygienic, easy to clean and long-lasting.

3. Handles
The oversized handle is a good example of the chosen aesthetic, its size and prominence suggesting its function. Heavily contrasted against the white background, the handle is easily visible for those with sight loss. Reaching from top to bottom allows taller residents and those in wheelchairs the same access point. As the one main point of interaction, the handle is made of hardwood to achieve a quality feel.

4. Drawers
Signs on drawers are evident in current homes and offer many benefits, even though residents, family and carers suggested that this approach might be stigmatising. By designing a new drawer front so that it is able to show the contents whilst remaining as similar to a standard drawer design as possible, gives the person cues to the whereabouts of specific items of clothing while making the signage redundant.

5. Personalisation
Personalisation should exist in as many places as possible to give comfort, enable communication and assist in identifying ownership. Having pictures of loved ones, hobbies and other topics relating to a person’s personal history placed on the wardrobe will help
residents recognise that the possessions they are interacting with are their own.

6. Out-of-season storage
It is important not to confuse residents with too many clothing choices. In this wardrobe, summer and winter clothing areas have been separated to reduce choice. Out-of-season clothes are able to be stored on site by designing the drawers to be naturally inaccessible for residents. Placing the drawers low, to the back and with no environmental cues as to operation limits access without the need for a lock or to store them in an offsite location. However the possessions stay with their owner.

7. Low Tech Illumination
Illumination is important because it assists the older eye to see better. It also highlights areas of interaction by providing better contrast. This is an area of focus for some wardrobe developments for dementia and is usually met by an electric-powered light to intensify the light. Low-tech solutions should be used wherever possible to cut down on cost and maintenance. Here, the design allows environmental light to penetrate the wardrobe more deeply.

8. Hangers
Specialised hangers have been developed so that whole outfits can be stored on one hanger. The design is different from traditional hangers by lowering the second level. Hanging whole outfits together makes storage and selection of clothing easier for residents and carers alike.

9. Assistive Care Suggestion
When the time comes that a person needs assistance in dressing, it is good care practice to give the resident two choices. Carers currently lay clothes out on a bed for residents to make a decision. A carer can now hang two options in combination with the specialised hangers on the white background of the front doors. This enables the resident to see how the cloths would look in a vertical layout and at the right scale without the need to conceptualise clothes stacked on a bed. Clothes hanging up in a ready-to-wear format may help an advanced-stage dementia resident anticipate the activity that is about to take place.

The bright sparks at Australian textile brand … umm … Sparkk have appointed N3RD to develop their online brand identity and electropresence.  Watch this space!!

One of the Two exhibitions at this years London Design Festival showing work by Nic Rysenbry and N3RD is the Sunbury Workshops Exhibition.

Organic Fabrication Prototype to be shown in the London Design Festival Next Week

So If you are around next week and can make it along … do, and if you come on tuesaday evening we will even give you a drink or 3.

Private View Invitation

The work being shown by N3RD is an ongoing study into construction techniques.  The prototype shown here is a strength and geometric test building on weaknesses discovered in earlier iterations, some of which can be seen here

Saw this cool little planter and had to share it!  You can buy it here or visit the designers website here.

Look up in any home, office or other indoor environment and the least used space will inevitably be the ceiling. What better place to grow an indoor garden without interrupting your day-to-day living.

Potted plants commonly lose water through evaporation and drainage. The BOSKKE Sky Planter’s unique reservoir feeds water gradually to the plant’s roots. Because there is no excess water to drain away, they can be used indoors, without losing water to evaporation.

Plants emit oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide and noxious chemicals. This purifies the air around us and increases well being, concentration and rest.

Plants have been proven to positively affect people’s physical and mental health. In the workplace, plants increase alertness and productivity and alleviate stress while studies show that most people prefer plants in their home.

This lively RSA Animate, adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA, illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.

www.theRSA.org

In a world where people appreciate good design everywhere, cool mini hotel rooms are the latest ‘it’ trend. In Tokyo, the Capsule Inn exemplifies the bare-essentials hotel rooms for brief use, and similar concepts are popping up at airports, train stations and downtowns around the world, replacing and mimicking the “day rooms” already existing at many airports.

Unlike Tokyo’s bed-only cabins where customers climb into a human equivalent of a honeycomb for a night’s rest, Yotel pods at Gatwick and Heathrow airports in London and Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam come in larger and more comfortable formats. These self-contained mini hotel rooms are equipped with a bed, table, HD TV and Wi-Fi.

The fourth Yotel is set to arrive in New York in 2011 with a location opening on 42nd and 10th street boasting 669 luxury rooms and the largest outside terrace in any hotel in New York

Also in Amsterdam, Citizen M has a hotel with 230 mini rooms at Schiphol Airport and a 215-room hotel in Amsterdam City. Citizen M plans to open similar hotels across Europe.

Qbic Hotels has opened two “cheap chic” hotels with mini rooms in the Netherlands: Qbic World Trade Centre Amsterdam and Qbic Maastricht, plus one in Antwerp, Belgium.

Taking the next step in rest and space efficiency, Russia’s Arch Group designed the SleepBox.

Along with an airport version of the rest pod, equipped with the usual, high-tech necessities offered by other companies, Arch Group has also designed an easy-to-relocate version fit for hostels. A small, mobile compartment, 2m (l) x 1.4m (w) x 2.3m (h), SleepBox is made of wood and MDF. SleepBox is meant to “allow very efficient use of available space and, if necessary, a quick change of layout”, making it perfect for hostels where demand and space available often come in conflict with each other. The hostel-specific SleepBox features bunk beds, flip-out tables and sockets for computers or phone chargers and not much else. Yuri Pushkin, Tuija Seipell.