Watch a film about the Porter's Chair on Vimeo.
Alastair Kingsland
Design Director, Minima Design
My name is Alastair Kingsland. I'm design director at Minima Design, we're based in Framlingham in Suffolk, and we're working on the portering chair brief for the Design Bugs Out competition.
The problems with the traditional design
When we started looking at the existing products, we realized that they're made up of a lot of components and therefore lots of joints, and it's the joints which really cause the problem.
Hands-on research
The most useful research for us was that that we conducted ourselves. We had some great expert input, but actually trying things and learning things for yourself--trying out chairs, pushing chairs, acting as patients, and also observing people in hospitals--gave us a whole body of knowledge which we could actually talk to experts about and therefore learn more.
We recognized early on that there are a number of functional requirements the chair has to have. For the porter, it's about manoeuvrability, about getting the patient in and out of the chair. For the patient, it's comfort and also the feeling of safety.
Nigel Blair
Technical Director, Minima Design
Prototyping
We made this rig which has a set of castors on it and we can move them round, we can, we can have the moving ones at the front or the moving ones at the back; it also allowed us to actually do some tip tests.
Alastair Kingsland
One of the most informative tests that we did was to have people act as patients and porters and put coloured chalk on their hands so we could actually see for ourselves where the chairs were being touched.
You immediately see, that not only have I touched the handlebars, but I've touched the armrests, right underneath, and also, in this case, the seat, and underneath there, as well. And all of those joints are dirt-traps.
Challenges of the design
We took those findings into our internal brainstorms and we kicked around lots of ideas. You have the seat itself, the chair back, you have the arms which have to move out of the way to allow lateral transfer of patients getting onto the chair say from a bed. You have leg rests which pull out from underneath the chair. You have the whole stability and the wheel aspects, and on the back we've got a caddy area that allows us to drop in gas bottles or, in fact, antiseptic wipes, again, to encourage cleaning of the chair between patients. As well as that, we have a braking system. We have the footplate which raises and lowers. And we have an IV pole. So it was quite a challenge for us to bring all the elements of the design into a very fluid concept.
Choice of materials
The main material that we've used is polypropylene, it's rotationally moulded, and it allows us to have quite large components which are self-coloured, so there's no paint to damage or flake off. We've also used PU--polyurethane mouldings for things like the seats and the armrests and the leg rests, to provide additional comfort for patients.
The final design
We're very proud of the final design. It really embodies everything that we wanted it to do. I think this design is going to be really successful and we're really looking forward to seeing it in hospitals across the country.