Jihoon.Folio
Jihoon.Folio
Mix & Match Trolley
Designed with Kaiwen Wang
"Producing a sensory trolley design that will introduce positive methods for Adult Ward Patients to release stressful emotions during their recovery treatment at the Bendigo Hospital."
Background
The project focuses on patients at the Psychiatric Wards who are there because they each have an individual sensory difficulties or unique needs that could only be treated at a mental health hospital. Therefore the project looks into addressing these issues by introducing a positive method through our sensory trolley that could be used to help them to overcome their struggles that overtake their life through the sensory therapy that the design enables. Our design challenge is focused on making a different during the interaction between the patient and the objects to provide therapeutic while enjoyable relaxing sensorial experiences for patients.
Problem
Based on research the largest number and highest rate of separations were for patients aged between 35-44 years of age. In 2009-2010, it was found that the most common principal diagnosis among separation with a specialised psychiatric care are depressive episode (18.1%), then schizophrenia (16.1%). Through this information we explored our design to identify how our design could address these issues and have the performance in providing a positive experience for mental health patients specifically who are facing struggles who needs an encouragement to maintain in being themselves during recovery period. The high percentages gained from the statistic gained our attention of wanting to address these characteristics as we became motivated to design a sensory trolley that could have the potential of becoming beneficial to mental health patients as well as offering activities that provides stress-relief effect.
Designing Environment
The consideration needed to be taken that the patient is able to utilise the project outcome in a safe environment. Additionally, doing this in a larger area than the patient’s room is highly recommended because we do not want them to be hindered and be injured by the facilities such as the edges from furniture or any hard objects. Based on the hospital visit, the patients in the Adult Ward have an average stay of 10 days so we have attempted to incorporate interesting features into our trolley design to be able to gain attraction immediately from the user and has the capacity to provide enough contents with activities that could be used during this short period of time.
Targeted User
When we have been given a brief introduction to the main Three Wards from the Psychiatric department at the start of this project as a group we wanted to choose the Adult Ward (18-65 years old) over the Aged (65 years old and onwards), Parents and Infancy Wards (both applicable to father and mother) because this ward compared to other Wards had a greater amount of space that was provided at the hospital that could potentially give us large range of options when we start designing our trolley. However after learning that there are separate rooms that are used for sensory treatment purposes our group became not convinced as to why we have chosen the Adult Ward each rooms had similar area of space in comparison to rooms from other Wards. Initially with too much assumption made by our group as we did not have any experience of working in the fields of mental health it has led the group in confusion as to what we are basing on to decided which ward we want to focus on. It was through researching to learn about the commonalities associating with mental health related care our group was able to build upon the information from resources and helped us to explore our trolley design purpose.
Concept Designs
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Initial Mock-Up
The photo shows a cardboard model that we have made during early stage of the project experimenting with using shapes as a functionality, in this case the thick part of the design acts as a cushioning/punching bag to allow the patient to release their stress with the idea of incorporating a giving reaction where as you punch the surface an aroma would be released from the inside of the material.
Inspiration
Initially we started the design of the trolley through focusing on different shapes and forms for the design of the trolley inspired by designers from renown to contemporary ranging from visual art to furniture design. These inspirations have also given me a starting point in my design of the experimentation with different features that incorporates with meditation that are evidently shown in our final design. The inspirations became the foundation in my initial sketches of various shapes made by foam material challenging flexibility restriction, adapting and creating a new environment, hygiene and maintenance for a safe and long-term use purposes.
Storyboard
Early Concept
Moving away from the idea of incorporating a punching bag in our design because a punching bag needs to have a good support in order to withstand the user’s punch without failing however we realise that we as a group wanted to broaden the sensorial aspects in our design. Looking into my inspirations, we became attached with the idea of using shapes to create a functional trolley and began sketching and made a scale 1:5 prototype based on my first solid work drawing.
Material Exploration
As our group were heavily focusing on foam objects due to its flexibility, can be shaped in complex foam but most importantly save to use, material research is shown to compare different types of foam that we may be able to use.
After looking into different types of foam, we have also looked into type of cover that could be used to protect the foam surface, including fabric (such as leather, lycra, silk), soft plastic board, card, polyester and elastane, rubber. As we want to also somehow incorporate light with the foam objects to increase the experience we have found interesting products that utilise foam and LEDs to achieve a lighting inside the material. Although one of our major concern was the price of the foam as they can become expensive.
Design Development
EVA Foam/Water Jet Cut
Prototyping Final Design
Final Outcome
Activities: Sensory Objects
Foam Objects
There are geometric shaped objects inside the red box and organic shaped objects in the blue box. Experiment by ‘mixing’ different shapes through stacking the objects together.
Bowling (Suggestion Activity): Geometric shapes allow you to build towers where you can locate anywhere around the space and using the rounded shapes, roll to knock into the towers.
Encouragement Cards
There are three pages, each consisting of two sets of description and inspiring quotes focusing on a positive word/emotion. The last page is the feedback section that provides the user to with about their sensory experience using the whiteboard marker.
This allow the patient to connect with the staff as well as knowing which aspect of the trolley could be improved.
Manual Guide
"A sensory trolley design that introduce positive methods for Adult Ward Patients to release stressful emotions during their recovery treatment at the Bendigo Hospital."
