Emotionally Meaningful Homecare : Designing for good relationships between patients and devices

Industrial design is an expanding field. Through new research, discussion and explorations the definitions of what designers can and should do is constantly discussed and redefined. The starting point for my master thesis is the investigation of the concept of emotional durability. In other words, I have looked into how designers could create more meaningful relationships between users and products. It concerns product style norms, terminologies for describing relationship types, as well as a product’s meaning to a user. In order to put learning outcomes into practice, this master thesis also involves a design project where I created a proposal for a new rehabilitation product. There is great potential in investigating how meaningful medical devices for the home should be designed. During my design process I try to dig into what it means to design medical products for a home environment. At the same time, I explore how to create emotionally durable experiences for the patients and increase the motivation in their rehabilitation. My proposal is a balance exercising device that introduces a new level of user interaction, which connects back to my research on emotional durability.