Memolo (projekt)

“What is the future of elderly care?” is it that new wheelchair, an special designed phone or that huge flat screen? Since lot of older adults experience life very different after their retirement many product are made to help them.

By using these products they can satisfy their needs for transportation, hearing, seeing, etc. But this only applies for the lower needs in the hierarchy of needs.
What about the higher needs? On the current market there are already products to satisfy the need for Esteem and Self-actualization, but most of these products are hard to use and use a strategy that can not be applied for older adults.

This is exactly where our project was placed. We searched for a solution to give back the quality of life. Our goal is to make people feel useful at the end of the day, to make them feel proud of what they have done and to improve their quality of life.

The best thing to do, to satisfy these needs is to get out there and do something. The problem is that a lot of information about where to find good activities/events is spread all around us and one person simply isn’t able to gather all this information.

For now our work will remain unpublished, but we are looking forward to share our project in public.

This project is designed by me (Coen Claassen) and Matthias Werner. We share all the design credit and we are both the founders of this service/product.

Our project will be presented at the Lebensräume 2010 organized from 23 till 25 March 2010 in Hanover (Germany). At this fair we will present our service and our product(s) with a video and functional prototypes.
.

Work day and night

My last days in Weimar are passing by very quickly. The project is starting to come together and I already planned my trip home.

The last couple of days me and Matthias worked day and night on our project. Together we decided to make a video that explains our service/product. We build a studio, drew and cut out our characters and last night we shot the movie.

We didn’t sleep very much but the end result is going to be amazing!
.

Anything glows (fachkurz)

Today tiny computers are embedded in many products. Through recent prototyping technologies aimed at designers, rather than at specialized engineers, we as product designers are able to master the tools to physically & functionally sketch our ideas. By using functional prototypes, we can gain insight into the strengths and flaws of our initial designs. These physical sketches are the basis for testing our prototypes on users and iteration throughout the process.

In this course I explored the possibilities of visual communication while examining solutions that enable objects to communicate with their potential users by using light.

In this course I experimented with Arduino and physical computing. Since I already graduated as Mechanical Engineer I have some experience with programming and electronic components but always in more advanced systems such as Programmable logic controllers. This course brought controlling down to the level of Micro controllers which are often used in mass produced products since they are cheap and small.

In this course I experimented a lot with electronics to finally came up with one mayor installation. By using light sources, mirror and semi transparent mirrors I created an interesting concept of the illusion of infinity.
Afterwards I experimented with on and of switching of lights and only showing them in one reflection to create the illusion of motion. Foam was added between the mirror and Led layers to allow bending the reflection and creating the illusion of controlling the virtual space/tunnel.

To see how my device works check out the pdf.
.

.

Going home for Christmas

In my last post I told about looking forward to spend Christmas in Weimar, but unfortunately everybody is going home, I bought a ticket and also am going home tomorrow.

For the first time I feel rather sad to go home…

At the end of January I will leave Weimar and everything will end. It is possible to go back, but it will never be as it is today. This may sound very sad but this is the way of Erasmus and you should take it an other way.

January will be my last month in Weimar, and lets make it the best one!
.