Poor diet and our increasingly inactive lifestyles are causing ill-effects for the NHS. It is often older people who feel the effects of these issues most acutely through ill-health or depression. Conventional responses include everything from large scale government campaigns to paid-for personal gym membership, but so far these have failed to reverse the trend.
So Kent County Council, with the support of the Design Council, is trying out a completely new approach to preventative healthcare.
In 2005 Kent County Council identified that many of its residents needed to increase their levels of personal activity. The council decided to partner with a team at the Design Council to see if the principle of user-centred design could lead to a new way of encouraging people to exercise.
‘This is where a design approach can add most value,’ explains Chris Vanstone, a design consultant who worked with the Design Council on the project. ‘Designers view problems through the eyes of the user. They also work in short intensive bursts, looking for insights and ideas that connect to people’s lives.’
Kent County Council proposed that the Design Council team work with people in and around the Park Wood estate in Maidstone. The team brought together a diverse group of designers, user experience specialists, product designers and branding experts as well as policy analysts, health care professionals, personal trainers and psychologists to work with the residents of the estate and other local stakeholders.
During the five month project, a radical new approach to personal activity emerged: a service that does not offer or prescribe activity, but instead supports groups of people to organise it for themselves.
At the centre of the system is a platform for activity called Activmobs.
In more depthFind out how ActivMobs made an impression on New York at the Museum of Modern Art and its exhibition,
Design and the Elastic Mind which ran from February 24 - May 12 2008
