VECHTVERBAND
PROJECT ON GESTATIONAL DIABETES
A FOLLOW UP FOR NEW MOTHERS
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Through the application of the Scenario Based Product Design method (SBPD) this project allowed our design team to create a communication tool to help health professionals from the Dutch company Vechtverbrand to provide a better follow up to women struck with gestational diabetes or overweight during pregnancy.
From the explorative phase to the final design, questionnaires, gift game, CUTA sessions... etc. were used to harvest relevant clues about the routines of health professionals and there patients. Out of this information, current and future scenario were depicted to illustrate and highlight the opportunities of improvement.
A digital application was prototyped as a final design allowing health professionals to share important information about the patients and worked as a communication tool between themselves and with the pregnant women.
The project was developed within the framework of the course "Scenario Based Product Design", taught by dr. J.A. Garde at the University of Twente. This project had the particularity to involves students in a professional design team. Indeed, one of the team member Carian van der Sman was working as a consultant for the company Vechtverband. This project also highlighted the usefulness of the SBPD method which allows to cease the expectations of the clients in a very subtle way.
SCENARIO BASED PRODUCT DESIGN
PROCESS
This project was based on the Scenario Product Design approach, a user-centered design method. Scenarios are expressed as a mean of communication between users and designers. They can be written scenarios, comics, videos. Eventually, a prototype aiming to solve highlighted issues is designed, then new scenarios are created to express potential disfunctioning or possible improvements.
While being efficient, this method is highly time consuming and this experience is a great reminder for further projects. Also, the design team was multinational (China, Mexico, USA) and intercultural traits were datas to consider to achieve this project successfully.