AGING WITH DIGNITY

Personal Care Product Design for Elderly People

In China, the amount of people who are over 60 years old takes up almost 11% of the total population. In the next decade, China will face a even more serious aging problem, however, aging doesn't necessarily mean lack of health care, being alone and low quality life. It’s highly valuable to  design a product which helps old people aging gracefully! In 2012, we worked with Philips and TU/e to design elderly healthcare products for Chinese elderly.

ANALYSIS TO INSIGHTS

Background study: Rediscovery aging in our eyes, define the problem and conduct design research.

From this picture, we can see many old people’s problems are caused because they do not treat themselves properly when they are still young. Thus, we determined to design products which target at the people who are going to enter aging stage. Like our parents, who are gradually getting old but still not belong to the old people.

Thinking about the aging problem, the first thing that came into our mind is the difficulty these aging people will face in absence of young people around. Although Chinese used to value a close relation within family in old times, young people now intend to work far away from home as a result of urbanization. Without these young at home, aging people need to take care of themselves alone, which we think should be a good insight of the problem. However, we need more investigation. Chinese has own unique thinking of keeping health. We respect for the integrity of man and nature. We believe life lies in motion, longevity lies in happiness.

INSIGHT TO CREATION

Learn consumer: Gain insights into users, conditions empathy visualization and Key learning. 

Learn market: Design a theme, position our product, discovering opportunities.

Analysis: Brainstorm for creations and draw flow of user experience.

Focusing on the difficulty in aging people’s daily life, we spent five days following five old people aging from 50 to 86. We made Empathy maps through their talking, activities and their way of thinking. And we can see that 86-year-old Prof. Li is one of the interviewers. According to their daily life style, we created a experience flow chart about things they do to keep healthy. We put their demands and problems into different time point, and trying to discover the design idea and opportunity.

We found almost all of the old people want to keep healthy and tend to pay special attention to their health maintenance. However, not all of them can cover the expense. Taking these into account, we put our focus on people who are going to enter aging stage but still in healthy physical state. We are aiming at find the positive attitude and health life style among these age group. Because these people are strongly demanding for high-quality, affordable, sustainable personal care product.

During the interview, several elderly people told us that they always do acupoint massage to keep healthy. This gives us the idea of smart healthcare family. “Pushy” and “Knockie” both can improve your physical health conditions according to Chinese Acupressure. We hope to design a series of products that contain both Chinese ancient wisdom and modern technology and keep everyone living longer and living better.

CREATION TO REALIZATION

Design product: Diverge thoughts, assess value of ideas, design products with interpretation and elaboration.

“Pushy” is a nose massager. During the massage, the friction will gradually create heat which will stay at a most comfortable temperature. People can simply hold it with two fingers and then massage their nose around Ying Xiang point. It will keep people away from many diseases including catching cold.

Why we design Pushy. Nose, is the most important gate of human body, it controls the fresh air intake and the waste air output from our body. As the old saying: “lung is connecting directly with the nose ”. The nose is the first guard of our body defense system, keeping us away from dust and disease. Thus, the care of nose is extremely important.

Massage the both sides of nose, especially massage the Ying-Point (0.5 centimeters away from the nose) can cure hypomania, facial paralysis or spasm.

If elderly massage their nose every day. It will help them to nourish lung’s air, and prevention of colds and nasal diseases, as well as keep body fitness.

“Knockie” is a pat hammer. The product has 3 massage modes such as heating mode, multi-touch mode and rotating mode. By using it, users can release stresses on their shoulders, legs and feet.