In pè

One more time,  I am writing this story on behalf of a WeMake codesign session attendee, in order to preseve their privacy.

The older we grow the more limited our motion become, and the less capable we are of taking care of ourselves. At a certain age, an elderly would need near to 24/7 attention in order to ensure that they are doing fine.  Mainly, they didn’t just slip and fall down, while harming themselves or going into coma.  As a care giver, it is very frustrating and very stressful not to e able to keep an eye on the people you care for, and because it might be literally impossible to keep company of the ones you care for all the time (even at the caretaking place), life will be easier if a certain device is attached to the ones we care for, and is able to alarm us if they fell down.   Then we can adjust functionalities of what reactions does this device do after the fall alaram.  Call a certain number? Call the police? Wait for the person to cancel the alarm and announce that they are fine.    A badly designed or less functional device will make it difficult for elderly ones to put it on and use.  Imagine if someone had a push button necklace that they can press to call the ambulance in case of danger, but because the mecklace looked silly, the person never put it on, and eventually they did die at a certain accident where they could have been saved by the neckalce.  Imagine, how the care giver feels?   Could you?

We need a solution that is funtional and inviting where elderly people can put it on, use it, and keep themseleves safe, while lift off some of the concern of the ones who need to take care of them.?  Imagine?

Header image by Jérémy-Günther-Heinz Jähnick This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

A favourite of mine, this alarm signaling device

I don’t know which of the three solutions proposed by the community in the co-design workshops won and will be prototyped, but this seems like widely useful and needed.

Let’s hope it won’t be too advanced in what it can do :-) and risk something like with the baby monitors - they were first simple audio devices with a clear functionality and now they’re IoT machines or what not, prone to hacking and violating privacy.

Curious, will the people who have already participated in the initial phase be involved in the actual prototyping?