Nora, a lamp with a value of companionship

Amy, a special pillow that provides comfort to the user by its warm part and a soft vibration

Veli, the conceptual product of the line

user evaluation with elderly of the retirement home

overview of the concepts in relation with the user group

HB_LQ from Virginia Patricia Rispoli on Vimeo.

user-centred design and emphatic design approach

Handige Beestjes-Design for Social Inclusion_2016

This project was created during the first year of the Master, in the squad Design for Social Inclusion. The attempt was to design intelligent products that provoke emotional responses that enhance social interaction and wellbeing. We approached this goal by embodying traits and characteristics of domestic pets into smart objects to promote social inclusion amongst, proposing seamless integration of smart products into ‘smart retirement homes’. This resulted in the product line Handige Beestjes which so far consists of three objects, with different level of agency. Two of the products are prototyped and one is presented as a concept. The designed concepts brought together the main values of Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) and Robot-Assisted Therapy (RAT) to fight social inclusion among elderly in retirement homes, resembling generic products where their animalistic traits emerge through their interactions. An empathic design approach has been used to extract the key values and user needs, and Actor-Network Theory has been used to analyze the products and their interactions in the context of use throughout the different prototype iterations. The development process of Handige Beestjes involved an iterative empathic design process, involving users at different development stages. This process is most appropriate when designing for social inclusion of elderly due to its sensitive nature.

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