10-week term project in collaboration with Biomedical
Background
The three term-projects at the APD programme essentially have
the same basic goal, to identity relevant design opportunities and
design solutions and products for these, but the point of departure
is quite different. In this 3rd and last term project, the students
do not start with a given user group or a specific brand or an
obvious problem, but with an emerging technology. This year our
starting point was a new emerging method that could be the
generation of Microdialysis: Surface-Microdialysis (SMD). The
collaborating partner was Pernilla Abrahamsson, a local researcher
who discovered and patented a new type of SMD catheter.
Work Method
In the brief time at hand the students studied the background
for this emerging surgical method that principally would allow
having multiple catheters on an organ or other types of living
tissue, thereby giving more detailed and correct monitoring and
information to a surgical team or other hospital personnel,
primarily during and after a surgical procedure, like an organ
transplantation. The project started with a visit at the Umeå
University Hospital's animal test clinic where clinical tests are
carried out and where tests with this new technique have been made
to validate the principle. That same week there was a joined
two-day workshop facilitated by the visiting design tutor Stefan
Magnusson at the Umeå Institute of Design with external
participants from the hospital.
During the following weeks, supplementary visits at the hospital
and research were made after which the students wrote and handed in
their design briefs describing what area and focus they had decided
to address with the SMD technique.
The final presentation consisted of a digital presentation
describing the problem and method employed, presentation and
functional models describing the usage and overall concept and
design of the projects. The result was eight different concepts for
new SMD concepts that included the pump system, the sample
collection, new designs of the catheter itself, and video
documentation on how the concepts were intended to be used.
Unfortunately it is not possible at this stage to show all the
results, so instead we display images from the process.
External project tutor:
Stefan Magnusson, industrial designer, No Picnic, Stockholm
External lecturers/ tutors:
Patents: Steen Mandsfelt, industrial
designer (DK)
Product interaction: Nils-Erik Gustafsson,
Interaction specialist
Course responsible:
Thomas Degn, Programme Director for the APD programme
