Casebeskrivelse:
Stenumgård is a rehabilitation offer for citizens in Brønderslev municipality. There are different professions attached to the place for example occupational- and physiotherapists and social and health care personnel.
The purpose of a stay at Stenumgård Rehabilitation is to make the patient as active in their own life as possible through meaningful and relevant everyday activities.
Target group:
Their target group is primary older citizens with a need for intensive training to heighten their activity and function levels. The clients come from their own homes or the hospital. They can be orthopaedic, neurological or medical citizen, who have been granted a short stay.
Problem area:
They have a green area, which is not currently used. If the personnel has to take the clients to the green area, they will have to take them around the house, because it is too steep from the terrace and there is neither any path nor stairway. The green area has a lake, trails, grass and a terrace with small raised beds. The center has many citizens who could benefit from various sensory systems, and that is something a well-developed sensory garden will be able to offer. Through the sounds, smells, touch. The citizens will be able to improve its rehabilitation as decreased sensation is one of the major therapeutic areas among its citizens.
The Concept:
The very idea of a sensory garden is really good because you through several studies conclude that physical activity increases the quality of life and cognition, but as long as the user can not get out on the terrace or garden there will not be much point in creating the garden before these areas have been resolved.
Through our work process we came up with these five core values that the final concept is built around.
Based on our observations, information, and in cooperation with our contacts from Stenumgård we have chosen a focus area to try to add value to their residents. We’ve thought of several solutions on how this might look in relation to Stenumgård. Our final solution is based on the concept of accessibility, which should help to improve the quality of life. This means that it must be user-friendly and easy to get out on the terrace, as it is a major problem today that Stenumgårds residents can not get out through the doors in the common area and enjoy the current terrace. Instead of focusing on the garden we have initially chosen to focus on Stenumgårds terrace, which is great, delicious, but poorly utilized. It would be an advantage for Stenumgård to implement three areas: Rehabilitation, senses and social space.
This will also give the residents a place where they can socialize with each other, family and employees. In addition to the social, it is important that the training becomes part of everyday life and culture of the residents. There is some evidence that physical activity has a positive effect on sleep, and physical activity is also associated with greater psychological “well-being” and a lower incidence of depression. (Sundhedsstyrelsen)
We believe that it is important to Stenumgård focus on these areas as the first step in creating added value for their residents. In the longer term, they can use the results they can measure from the terrace to develop the sensory garden. Here you have the opportunity to measure the impact in terms of mobility, the impact of social time together and the speed of their rehabilitation.
Group 16 is composed of members from three different studies. We are:
Lise from Experience Design
Zenia from Interactive Digital Media
Helle from Interactive Digital Media
Sissel of Natural and Cultural Heritage Management
Alexandra of Natural and Cultural Heritage Management
Konceptvideo:
Designprocess:
Fieldwork
The field work was consisted of three parts; A trip up to Stenumgård where we observed the employees by being allowed to follow them in their daily lives with their citizens. In addition, we observed the area around the house, here the focus was on the garden terrace and common areas. We also had the opportunity to do in-depth interviews with the staff and some of their citizens. For the purpose of achieving a common understanding of what is a sensory garden we visited the future retirement home in Nørresundby, where we were given a tour by the manager who explained what values they tried to give their tenants. We visited the kindergarten Stampe in Aalborg, where we were allowed to see their sensory garden and what they had implemented such as sounds, lights, smells and tastes. Below is some video and photos from the field work in connection with Stenumgård.
Group meeting
After our trip in the field we met with group 15, where we discuss the observations that had been made. Here we found out that there are many small problems and big problems out on Stenumgård to be accessed before we could get started. To close it in, we talked about the areas that were the biggest problems. And we identified five core words; Availability, Experience, Social, values, and culture.
Sand Play
Through Sand-play, we were presented to a method on how to configure our knowledge. Here, with a focus around processing our experience from the fieldwork. Basically the method consists of a sandbox with access to 1200 different shapes and figures, the selection of an artifacts came from impulsive subconscious mind, and the location in the sandbox, on the same principle. Then we went in turn to tell about the figures relative importance. Case, based on location in the sandbox, their physical and symbolic significance and relation. It was a challenge to be forced to find meaning in something that seemed pointless. However, the exercise proved to be very given for the group. We started to get common ideas for a future concept. At the same time we saw an advantage in the method to find a common language.
Videosnippets
We used the method Videosnippets to locate the problems we observed though our fieldwork. We recorded a lot of footage during our fieldwork, were we visited Stenumgård, Fremtidens Plejehjem and the kindergarten Stampe. Afterwards we divided the recorded clips into groups; problems, ideas and how the problems affected the situation, so that we had all of the clips containing problems in one group. This helped us to better visualize the problems, and we ended up being able to see three main problems. The clips we put in the group ‘Problems’, we then put together in three small movies which we used during our second meeting with the company. Because of the three movies, we were also able to visualize the problems for the company. Below you can see our three videos showing the problems.
Meeting with Stenumgård
Monday we had to present our observation for Christian from Stenumgaard. Therefore we made a presentation in linoit to create a better overview. First we presented to him about all the observations we had made during the week before; both from stemungaard, the future elder home in Nørresundby and from Stampe kindergarten. Then we presented what we thought was the tree main problems for Stenumgaard 1.Acess to the terrace (or just outside) 2. The ability to go to the garden. 3. The terrace. After the presentation we ask what he thought about our observations and if he had anything to add. At last we explained a little about, what our plans for next week.
Here is a link to our presentation for Stenumgård.
Linoit Presentation
Brainstorm
During the brainstorming ideas of the group members were written down and later on divided into 4 different categories, namely : how to get out of the building, how to get down to the garden, how to change the garden and the terrace, so that people would enjoy their time there and finally, ideas that effect all three categories at the same time. By the end of the exercise the main values were identified. These are listed bellow:
- -have an effect on the citizens by using the garden
- -create social life
- -functionality of the garden
- -rehabilitation of the citizens
- -the experiences the citizens can gain
- -culture of the citizens and the staff as well
- -create an inviting area
- -encourage the interaction with the garden and with each other
Through the process of generating and categorizing ideas it urned out that the group membes have similar views on the topic and it was also obvious that there are lots of interesting proposals to create a pleasant and useful sensegarden. It was harder to find solutions for the accessibility even though it is clear that this is the primary problem, as the ranking indicates. Nonetheless the exercise proved to be useful, all of the group members who took part in it felt that the overall picture is getting clearer and the area of problems is getting narrower.
Videoskitser:
Customer Journey Map
We used the customer journey map as an oriented graph to describes the journey of our user by representing the different touchpoints that characterize their interaction with the garden.
We did this so we in the group could create a visualization, and described the interaction made by the user step by step as in the classical blueprint. We made a rough sketch that we used to create the users journey from the common area out on the terrace and down to the garden, through the garden and back up the path to the terrace and common area. We had the core values in mind when we did this to get a common understanding of what the user could need.
We started this process out by making several video sketches, we decided in the group that all of the group members had to make storyboards and from them we began to create the videos and in the end we ended up with three that could illustrate our 3 concepts. We made all three concepts in stop motion.
Concept 1
The first concept video describes the main problem we found out about our case. It is important to show the basic problem because it is not identical with the one that the company gave us. Therefore we need them to see the real issue, which is; that the citizens cannot even get out to the terrace alone. So we focused on solving that. A simple but realistic solution was is shown in the video, where citizens can use simple technology, and there bye be able to go out by themselves. Also with simple refurnishing more space could be provided for the citizens who are in wheelchairs.
Concept 2
The second concept video shows what could have been done if money wasn’t an issue. We thought it could be useful to let our creativity do the work and see the result. In that way we got ideas for the realistic concept that we couldn’t have thought of before. It is more expensive but also more effective technology that allows the citizen to be independent.
Concept 3
The third concept video shows how it is possible to implement an interactive system that offers many possibilities for the citizens. In the video we see a citizen that would like to get outside, and this possible because we implemented automatic door openers. All the citizen need to do, is pushing a button. Outside on the terrace there is an interactive media platform, which can help with stimulating the citizen’s senses. We know that the idea maybe wasn’t as realistic compared to concept one and two, but we wanted to present several concepts, so that we could illustrate the many possibilities. We used Photoshop to make the design for this video.