Charmr: Solving human problems with design, by Jeffrey Veen

Charmr: Solving human problems with design

This week in Washington DC, my former colleagues at Adaptive Path are holding their annual User Experience Week conference. Part of me is a little sad - this is the first one I've ever missed and was quite a labor of love when I was still with them. But another part of me is proud and inspired by what they've been showing these last few days.

In particular, they unveiled the Charmr project: A 9-week research and prototyping effort inspired by an “Open Letter to Steve Jobs” posted by Amy Tenderich on her Diabetes Mine blog. In that letter, Amy points out that far more design effort seems to be going into devices that entertain rather than equipment that keeps people alive. In her words,

Medical device manufacturers are stuck in a bygone era; they continue to design these products in an engineering-driven, physician-centered bubble. They have not yet grasped the concept that medical devices are also life devices, and therefore need to feel good and look good for the patients using them 24/7.

Rather than waiting for a client to fund this kind of work, a small team of designers at Adaptive Path carved out a project to see what they could come up with. They talked to diabetes patients, read the literature, and investigated the current trends in technology. From this, the produced a vision prototype in the form of a video - much like Apple's Knowledge Navigator or Sun's Starfire.

Take a moment to read this collection of blog posts on the Adaptive Path site and watch the video. It's really good stuff.

This entry was written by Jeffrey Veen and posted 16 August 2007 at 11:51 AM. It was filed under Technology. | View blog reactions

Comments

1. On 16 August 2007 at 2:20 PM George Beinhorn wrote:

Why are they writing to Steve Jobs. They should write to David Kelley at IDEO. Kelley has a real chance to prototype innovative designs in this area - he recently started the new design school in the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford. In that role, he isn't driven by the bottom line.

2. On 17 August 2007 at 4:10 PM Elisabeth Hager wrote:

In truth device manufacturers do not talk with patients...or physicians...when designing and manufacturing their products. Balan Biomedical was developed to gather the opinions of the users of devices and consumer health products to offer an easy and cost effective way for these companies to have access to critical information. The best way to influence real improvement is make the voice of the user available. Join the Balan network!

3. On 6 September 2007 at 11:36 AM Doug in Michigan wrote:

Sorry to be so off topic, but have you considered writing an updated version of your classic 2004 post Making A Better Open Source CMS? I am looking for a really good open source CMS product and am overwhelmed with the variety of choices.

4. On 10 September 2007 at 1:55 PM Bernard Farrell wrote:

I really liked what Adaptive Path did with this problem. It's really raised the challenge to a new level.

Unfortunately diabetes device makers have stopped at the requirements from FDA (reliable and functional) and not really considered the entire 'ecosystem' for these devices. What's it like to wear one? How can it be made to better suit the needs of the wearer? ('patient' in device maker terms) What about sharing information with the healthcare team.

The only bad side of all this is that there are a number of folks in diabetes-land who now expect to see the Charmr in the next few years.

Hey, it's a step in the right direction.