Incontinence Care

This Master’s thesis was performed in collaboration with Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget, SCA, in Gothenburg. The purpose was to use extreme situations to trigger new solutions within the incontinence care assortment. The purpose was further to evaluate the future potential of the developed concepts to find if they are beneficial for the normal use situation. The goals were to identify and evaluate the users’ needs and requirement in each extreme situation, develop concepts that increase the functionality and usability in these situations and to present prototypes of technical solutions designed to fit the conditions of the extreme situations.Combinations of three situations and three products were chosen for the study and theoretical and empirical evaluations of the interaction were performed on care provided by a caregiver to a care taker. The three chosen situations comprised care provided in darkness, with one arm and to a heavy care taker.

The evaluation included usability tests where changes were performed on manikins. Through the tests the caregiver’s needs and requirements within each situation were identified. Based on the result product concepts, focusing on the functionality and usability in the extreme situations, were generated. Two concepts were chosen for
further development and usability tests were used to validate the developed solutions and to identify areas of possible improvement. The final result is two separate product concepts, one two piece heavy incontinence protection which enables flexible application and a turn sheet aiding in the turning of the care taker. Based on the result it was concluded that the goal of increased usability and functionality was met through the development of the two concepts. Further it was possible to conclude that using extreme situations as a trigger has the possibility of generate new, interesting ideas with future potential for the normal situation.