About – Design for Wellbeing

About Design for Wellbeing

Tobias Larsson — Wed, 04 May 2011 06:58:27 +0000

Design for Wellbeing redirects the focus of product development from technology-based development, via needs-based development, to participative product development and innovation

Desired state of being = wellbeing

In the spirit of other user-centered initiatives — such as Universal Design, Design for All and Inclusive Design — the Design for Wellbeing framework aims to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities. However, the framework also offers an extension to the existing initiatives in the way that it does not merely focus on ”fixing” people by diminishing disabilities through the design of assistive, universal or inclusive technologies. Design for Wellbeing is a perspective on life quality and wellbeing that goes beyond the traditional scope of assistive technology in the sense that it aims to help people make a transformation from an actual state of being to a desired state of being — regardless of their ability level. Furthermore, companies working with product development will find that the Design for Wellbeing framework offers low-risk exploration of design concepts, carried out with youthful energy under expert guidance. The projects will help companies identify best practices in their processes, and compare these against best practices in other companies and industries. These practices are also folded into teaching at the partner universities, so that we better can train the next generation of designers/employees. Also, all participants are exposed to technologies supporting distributed collaborative design — providing crucial experiences in light of a global economy.

What is Design for Wellbeing?

Designing innovative products for increased wellbeing
Shaping the future of globally distributed collaboration
Educating the product designers of tomorrow

The main objective of the Design for Wellbeing initiative is to enhance the wellbeing of persons by using their descriptions of needs in relation to assistive devices, technology, or services, as a starting point for product development. We aim to give users an active role in developing their own solutions by allowing people from various disciplines to work with them in a product development team, all with the focus of improved wellbeing.

Design for Wellbeing redirects the focus of product development from technology-based development, via needs-based development, to participative product development and innovation.

Design for Wellbeing is carried out in the form of research projects, application studies and student projects, building on experiences from research and education projects. The courses are project-based and team-structured, and students work closely with corporate partners on real-world innovation projects. Design for Wellbeing is an ideal framework for collaboration across distance, disciplines and disabilities.

Designing innovative products for increased wellbeing.

Design for Wellbeing is a multidisciplinary project where several scientifi c disciplines are united in a common objective — to design innovative products that increase the wellbeing of persons regardless of ability level. The point of departure for the project is that we do not see a disability as a characteristic of a person; it is merely a description of the relationship between the person and the surrounding environment. In this context, society must be adapted to improve the wellbeing of individuals with impairments. Fundamentally, the concept of wellbeing involves increased participation in working life, sports, culture, leisure, recreation and entertainment – aspects of daily living and quality of life that too often are out of reach for people with disabilities. The engineering disciplines contribute with the expertise and knowledge needed to develop innovative products, while participants from health sciences, human work sciences and teacher education bring extensive knowledge about what it is like to live with a disability, how people with disabilities perceive and use their assistive devices, and what kind of learning processes that are involved in the introduction of new assistive devices. Design for Wellbeing gives users of assistive devices an opportunity to participate not only in needs analysis studies and prototype testing but also in conceptual phases and assessment of products in daily use in a long-term perspective.

Collaboration across distance, disciplines and disabilities

Design for Wellbeing is carried out in the form of student projects, building on experiences from creative project courses in engineering curricula at Stanford University, Luleå University of Technology, and Royal Institute of Technology. The courses are project-based and team-structured, and students work closely with corporate partners on real-world innovation projects. In Design for Wellbeing, the successful concept of these courses is redesigned to facilitate the participation of students and researchers from other disciplines than engineering and to achieve an active involvement of persons with disabilities. The projects are carried out both locally and globally since the Design for Wellbeing partnership includes organizations from Sweden, USA and Japan. Apart from the goal of increasing the wellbeing of persons with disabilities, the wellbeing projects aim to prepare participating students for innovative teamwork on a global arena, but also to provide researchers from various disciplines with a testbed within which new perspectives on product development, education and healthcare can emerge and be studied. The project provides an example of activities where students from different educational areas collaborate with researchers and external partners in multidisciplinary projects. Design for Wellbeing is an ideal project for collaboration across distance, disciplines and disabilities.

TAGS: about

Collaboration at its best

Tobias Larsson — Wed, 04 May 2011 06:55:03 +0000

Academic, public and private partners collaborate across boundaries to improve wellbeing.

The Design for Wellbeing initiative is an excellent platform for sustainable development for the future since it targets wellbeing, which is not a specific thing but rather a desired state of being. This creates an excellent opportunity to discuss “what is wellbeing for me, and how do I get there?”. So far, the following university partners have participated; Luleå University of Technology, Stanford University, Lund University, Blekinge Institute of Technology, KTH (Royal Institute of Technology).

Here are some testimonials from our collaborative network

PROFESSOR LARRY LEIFER
Director, Center for Design Research, Stanford University, USA

”The Stanford Center for Design Research creates customer wellbeing through the application of advanced design informatics. Our projectbased-learning courses always engage real outside clients to assure that students deliver wellbeing to real people. Our design research program studies engineers at work to improve the way they deliver innovative solutions. Using advanced design informatics technology enables the global partnerships needed to support our customers and our designers.”

H.F. MACHIEL VAN DER LOOS, PH.D.
Rehabilitation R&D Center, VA Palo Alto Health Care System, USA

”Our Center is devoted to designing and developing tools, devices, equipment, and information technology to assist people with disabilities, improve their quality of life and fulfill their life goals. The combination of research and design/ development activities, backed by extensive evaluation studies, enlists deep knowledge to create successful advances in rehabilitation and improve the wellbeing of people with disabilities.”

AGNETHA MBUYAMBA
President, The Swedish National Association for Disabled Children and Young People (RBU), Sweden

”Good assistive devices are central to people with disabilities. This is especially true for children and young people who are growing and developing. Good assistive devices for play and leisure are as important as devices for work and school. It might seem obvious that such devices work equally well outside and inside, in winter and in summer, in the city and in the woods — but there is still a great deal of work needed to reach this goal. Design for Wellbeing is an exciting initiative, which RBU actively want to support and participate in.”

PROFESSOR HISATO KOBAYASHI
Faculty of Engineering, Hosei University, Japan

”Hosei University is planning to launch a new institute related to Wellbeing Design in the next year. We are going to do several projects including conceptual design for wellbeing environments and assistive technology for wellbeing.”

TAGS: collaboration

Design for Wellbeing Methodology

Tobias Larsson — Wed, 04 May 2011 06:48:50 +0000

A participatory innovation process that will take the stakeholders from needs to actions.

The Design for Wellbeing methodology is a need-driven approach to creative product development. It is based on a Participatory Product Innovation (P²I) framework [1] and can be viewed as a hybrid of the systematic properties of integrated product development [2] and the creative properties of the “IDEO way” [3], with a solid base in needfinding approaches to design [4],[5]. The approach encourages designers and engineers to interact directly with users to gain insights into the customer domain.

The generic P²I master plan consisting of a timeline and a number of sequences to go through, guides the practitioner in the product development activities. The master plan does not point out the sequences in detail and the purpose is to provide the practitioner with an overview tool to estimate the efforts required for the whole project, as well as a map to keywords useful for searching relevant literature. The practitioner is encouraged to develop and improve the master plan. Practically, this means that the students are encouraged to use a variety of creative methods, e.g., the IDEO method cards and different brainstorming techniques, especially in the needfinding and concept generation phases.

At the moment, P2I include seven overall sequences;

Planning,
Design space exploration,
Roadmap,
Concept design and prototyping,
Detail design and manufacturing,
Pre-launch and
Product launch.

Besides the needfinding process, the second sequence, design space exploration, includes benchmarking, related technology and scoping. These activities are guided by the questions – What? Who? How? Why? The needfinding activities emphasise the ‘why question’ in particular to understand the customer’s context and priorities. The ‘what question’ is posed to understand the customer’s daily activities in detail. Within this interplay needs can be more carefully discerned. The scoping activities limits the design space by analysing data generated in previous activities. This activity prepares for the third sequence, the roadmap. A mission statement is included in the roadmap sequence. The mission statement establishes the general direction of the project without prescribing a particular way to proceed. Those who should benefit from the product and a description of how the target group should experience those benefits are to be included in the mission statement.

In search of what is missing : needfinding the SIRIUS way. / Ericson, Åsa ; Larsson, Tobias ; Larsson, Andreas. In: Knowledge Sharing and Collaborative Engineering : Proceedings of Fourth IASTED International Conference on Knowledge Sharing and Collaborative Engineering, KSCE 2006. Acta Press, 2007. 6 p. Research: Article for conference peer reviewed
K.T. Ulrich & S.D. Eppinger, Product design and development (USA; McGraw-Hill, 2000).
T. Kelley, The art of innovation. Lessons in creativity from IDEO, America’s leading design firm (USA; Currency and Doubleday, 2001)
D. Patnaik & R. Becker, Needfinding: The Why and How of Uncovering People’s Needs, Design Management Journal, 10 (2), 1999, 37-43.
R. Faste, Perceiving Needs. SAE Future Transportation Technology Conference and Exposition, Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc., Seattle, Washington, USA, 1987, 419-423.