OmArm

Supporting elderly with dementia to build rituals that give them autonomy later on.

OmArm is a daily-rituals training device for people who are starting to show symptoms of dementia. With it you train yourself to associate a specific ritual (such as showering) to a specific sound and shape. This way you are able to maintain autonomy later in your dementia, when you would have otherwise lost your ability to take care of yourself.

CLIENT: Sanne Konings

AGENCY: De Jongens van de TU

MY SCOPE – DESIGN STRATEGIST
– Design Strategy
– Industrial / Product Design
– Interaction Design (UX / UI)
– Creative Business Design

Where is my mind?

The difficult thing about dementia is that over time you lose the ability take care of yourself. This makes the lives of people with dementia, and the workload of their caregivers, more and more difficult as time progresses. The goal of this project was to improve on this situation.

Sanne Konings original product was called OmArm. It was a bracelet that allowed a caregiver and dementia patient to communicate at a distance using touch gestures and sound notifications. The idea was that this would give the care-giver some much needed breathing room, and bring comfort the patient.

Why the Redesign?

1. Stick with what I already know

During our research we found that most people with starting dementia are open to new solutions and technologies that could support them. Unfortunately, as the dementia worsens they become less able to understand these solutions. This is because they learned about them in a phase when the dementia was already present.

To remain effective, the solution needed to be changed so that it used existing bodies knowledge; before the dementia started.

2. Communicate richer

Our research also showed that communication was needed for more than just comfort. It was needed to be able to communicate about, and complete even the most basic daily activities (rituals). How do you communicate that it is time to shower, when that person cannot even understand you or the concept of showering?

3. The magic of music

Music has an amazing ability to trigger understanding, memory and lucidity in even very late stage dementia patients; as long as it is something they recognise from their past.

With OmArm we applied this phenomena in the form of a training tool. You learn to associate a sound to a specific daily ritual, so that you may understand what you need to do when you hear that sound during a later phase of dementia.

Plan for freedom

OmArm thus became a daily ritual planner for people with early symptoms of dementia, and a ritual reminder for people in later stages of dementia.

In the early phases you plan your daily rituals with your caregiver using the OmArm app. You also choose the song snippet that will remind you of that ritual. From that moment on the song snippet will be used as a notification sound every time the ritual occurs. This will be your daily memory training for that ritual.

Plan for freedom

OmArm thus became a daily ritual planner for people with early symptoms of dementia, and a ritual reminder for people in later stages of dementia.

Time Peace

The natural form-giving for this product was a watch, or personal clock, because it is already emotionally linked as a tool for maintaining daily rituals (existing bodies of knowledge). Unfortunately numbers become incomprehensible during later phases, so we redesigned the interface to only show symbols that match the sound of the ritual.

Also, technologies that are worn visibly within your intimate space become part of your identity. Anything that doesn’t match with the rest of your style will stand out and feel uncomfortable.

Therefore OmArm was designed to be screwed in and out of many different watch straps or necklace chains. You choose your own strap style.

Unscrewing is made easier with a fold-out grip, which also helps align the watch module into its charger.

Care system

A pleasant added bonus to OmArm is that the caregiver does not need to have a watch themselves. They can even communicate with multiple patient plannings through one app, and are given more time for this because they are able to allow a patient a certain level of autonomy in their lives. This should help with the over-burdened elderly health-care system.

Business responsibly

We advised the use of a Hardware Enabled Service model, where the product is physically sold for a lower price and there is a monthly fee for the app service.

This advice was given because the cost of the service could be spread over a longer period of time, and the contract could be ended once support was no longer needed. This benefited both the user and the business, as the user might not have much financial freedom and the business receives a more predictable cashflow.

Sanne Konings

OmArm

Supporting elderly with dementia to build rituals that give them autonomy later on.

Where is my mind?

Why the Redesign?

1. Stick with what I already know

2. Communicate richer

3. The magic of music

Plan for freedom

Plan for freedom

Time Peace

Charger slotting system

Charger in context; on the nightstand.

Care system

Business responsibly

Sanne Konings

OmArm

Supporting elderly with dementia to build rituals that give them autonomy later on.

Where is my mind?

Why the Redesign?

1. Stick with what I already know

2. Communicate richer

3. The magic of music

Plan for freedom

Plan for freedom

Time Peace

Charger slotting system

Charger in context; on the nightstand.

Care system

Business responsibly

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