Experience prototype 19/1-11

Today we had a mid presentation of the blanket book concept. Except from our class and professors Olav, Carol and Birgit from Karolinska was there to give feed back and input on the project. The concept was appreciated and we had some good discussions about ownership of the artifact and process vs. product.

The discussion around ownership was about complications in what happens after the patient has moved on. Relatives do often argue about belongings and this object could be another  artifact that could be problematic on that point. Also if there are many grandchildren. I think that the most natural is that the blanket belongs to the patient primarily. And as we have mentioned before the construction allows the blanket to be modified and taken apart and this might give the options of sharing the object. But we will definitely revise it further.

The process/product discussion was on whether the artifact is a process you co create and shape and what the product is. The pages we have worked on so far are a balance between creation and created. We would like to keep them dynamic in some of them as eg. the story is a finished piece and some other parts as the ‘velcro words’ and the ‘empty note page’ are meant to be co creatively shaped.

We also got feed back on the fact that we are mostly working with words and text and that we could maybe look on other possibilities also.

Meeting Tove!

Today I had the opportunity to meet Tove Bylund Grenklo. Tove have been working with the relatives perspective and now especially with teenagers in palliative care in her doctoral thesis. It was very helpful to meet up with her, see what she is doing and to discuss the project. She thought it could be interesting to look upon the function of this book as a combination of amusement or distraction, information and the life story of the patient. this makes alot of sense and she guided me towards some information sites and folders that deals with this complicated matter of explaining a decease like cancer in a good way.

Blanket book new sketch

After discussion with Nina today we decided to focus on a couple of pages for now. A game page, a story page, an empty note page for doodles and messages anda page in fridge-poetry style where the words get attached with velcro. This page could be used to build own stories or to express emotions and feelings.

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2nd prototype and experience prototyping

Today I made some tests with the real fabric and what filling to use for the pages to feel and function the way we want them to. We had an experience prototyping session with Rolf also. Rolf was the patient and Nina his grandchild. It was good to see how they interacted with each other. On wednesday we are having another presentation where we will show a more refined prototype. We are aiming to finish the content and graphic by tomorrow and to buy all the material to be able to finish the prototype this week.  Hopefully we could have all the pages with paper graphics by then to be able to discuss the book and its function without having imagine to much of what the concept is about.

Book_blanket_1st_prototype

A first very rough prototype was made today to get further. After discussion I decided to have 4 pages in focus right now. Nature pattern with soil as background, game page, character page and draw-on-cast page. The idea is that you can customize what pages you want and them put the book together with a type of  push button binding.

Mahmoud is the grandpa star. We discussed the feeling of the book and if the pages make sense. The awareness of the risk of the messiness is obvious. Mahmoud don’t really like the feeling of having many things on him. He says that “Even if it is probably less than a normal blanket I don’t like the feeling of having all these thing on me”. I am wondering of risks in this concept. Risk of infringement on the patient. Even if it could be good to select from many pages or amount of blankets. Maybe the pages below should be rolled up in the corner instead when they have been watched?

The game page could have traditional board games

turning the page

Mahmoud the angel

The draw-on-cast page is the one that was immediately used by Minnie who is the grandchild in this case.

Blanket book sketches

If interested, please choose book mode. Otherwise it wont make any sense:)

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FOCUS;Activities around bed – brainstorm

Thinking about the project and the three areas of interest it feel like the activities around the bed in palliative care between the patient and the visiting child is most suitable as this is where the most time is spent. To work on this further a brainstorm-role play session was facilitated today. We started out by throughing out activities as a warm up.

activities grandma’s do

then activities children do

and then combining some of them

a close up

 

 

Then we had a role play session where I am the child, Minnie the grandmother and Bonnie my mother. The motivation for this was to put ourselves in the situation. Idea wise this was fruitful and we had a good discussion of the situation we have observed before in the palliative care facility.

The fringes are very attractive in a situation were there is not much to focus upon

And the waves are a fact when we speak about blanket either work with or not at all!

Three areas of interest

From the observations, interviews and discussion with children and parents experienced in this situation three areas of interest have been made.

Activity Kit – As a pyssel kit you can get when traveling this version could excist with objects related to the situation. The child could get it as a gift when arriving to the facility and by that feel important and acknowledged. The kit could excist of drawing book, pens, dolls, handy crafting tools as friendship bracelets etc. The drawing-fill-in book could have other types of drawings even rather tough drawings of the process. As Gerry Koocher writes it is sometimes easier for children if they know what is going to happen to the body and by that exclude some anxiety. There could also be e.g dolls with hidden wings representing the alive/dead process etc etc.

Co create audio memories for later – From interviews and discussions we found out that the small very personal stories, told by the grandparent as well bedtime songs/ stories and wisdom words would be nice to capture for the future. Embodied audio memories that are co created. Grandma’s pearls are obviously only one way of storing this information and it could be done in many various ways. But there is something poetic about storing them in pearls as pearls are so beautiful and hanging around the neck. It almost becomes as the memories were whispered into them.

Activities around bed – Most often the activity the relatives do together when visiting is to sit around the bed and talk. From interviews we have found out that this is not suitable for children for a longer period of time. And it seems like there could be something done there in favor for both the child and the patient.  One idea is a kind of a book blanket where the pages has many different types of activities. There could be page with stories, a page with games, etc etc that could encourage or spark an interest of slow calm activities.

Discussions with kids

The plan was to have a workshop in a kindergarden with a group of children. A set- up for the workshop was made with a child specialist but unfortunately the kindergarden had kräksjukan and we had to cancel it. Instead it was executed in a smaller way. With Freya and Linnea we discussed and talked about activities you do with your grandparents and what they did with their grand parents. We were also talking about what type of activities they like to do and what is comforting to them.