The first week of the HCDRIC course was extremely interesting and full of new knowledge. The lecture by Marko Kohonen from Finnish Red Cross was super engaging – as he had experience working for international Red Cross, he opened the topic through Nepalese earthquake. In terms of disaster management, he introduced 3 stages – preparation, response and recovery, while the latter can last over decades and involve changes in education, building stronger constructions, etc. As the Red Cross movement concentrates on giving immediate help, they are focused on the response and saving as many lives as possible. An aspect, what Kohonen pointed out can seem in a way truly obvious, but disasters cannot be avoidable – there are always things happening, unable for us to control – like the current covid-19 crisis.
From fashion designer’s perspective it is interesting to see how personal protective equipment (PPE) has becoming more significant category of design because of the pandemic. As fashion industry focuses more on the consumption of ‘regular’ garments, PPE is something which importance is not emphasised during usual circumstances, but during crisis, protecting oneself (and others) becomes one of the utmost priorities.
Previous virus outbreaks – like Ebola in African countries – have addressed the problem of having poor PPE, which does not meet the needs of people. Unfortunately, as these outbreaks were mainly in regions with poor markets, some of the innovations created during the crisis weren’t noticed by the global health community or private sector. PPE at its broadest sense “consists of a suit and protective layering that completely covers health workers’ bodies” and thus enables them to take care of the patients, minimising the risk of virus transmitting (Dalberg Design, 2013). However, they often cause a lot of discomfort for medical personnel – materials trapping heat inside, goggles fog, hoods and masks interfere the communication with patients. Although saving human lives is the utmost priority for medical workers, uncomfortable PPE makes it difficult for them to perform the best.
As already mentioned, Ebola crisis showed that the existing PPE does not match with the users’ needs – medical personnel had to modify the existing items to create better solutions. It highlights the issue of PPE and medical wear is designed to meet everybody’s needs, but it has created a situation, where “one size fits none” (Black & Torlei, 2013). For providing better equipment for medical personnel fighting Ebola, material manufacturer (Kappler) collaborated with Cornell University to create easier PPE suit, which would be lighter, safer and easier to put on–dispose. As PPE, especially medical wear, have to cater multiple stakeholders’ needs, the prototypes were tested by the Ebola fighters in treatment units to see how the items are used in real-life scenarios. Moreover, as the participants modified the suits, it provided valuable insights for the researchers for further developments (Dalberg Design, 2013).
Therefore, PPE and medical wear show great potential for more user-centred (co-)design, designed to be modifiable according to everyone’s needs. Of course, as these items are used during crisis, then ‘upgrades’ should be developed with people who have working under similar conditions, meeting their exact needs. As medical personnel all over the world has been posting images on social media, showing the marks masks have left on their faces, I assume better PPE design will be in the focus for a while. Moreover, even if the PPE issues previously have not been addresses, the current covid-crisis has hit particularly hard the Global North with richer economies – as it has highlighted vulnerabilities in the system, the new solutions are hopefully more user and human cenred.
Key insights from the week 1:
* Human-centred design seems to be still mostly focusing on Western context and thus can be a bit sterile
- • During crisis, local knowledge is the most valuable information as well as local helpers and ‘workforce’
- • With natural disasters, women and men cope crisis differently – specially floods and natural hazards can increase women’s death rate as they are not physically as strong as men (e.g. if need to hold on something)
- • In some crisis situations, giving money to people is better solution, while it gives them the chance to buy what they need, and additionally boost local economy
- • Technology has helped a lot in disaster management, but in terms of AI development, there has to be lots of work done before it could be reliable
References:
Dalberg Design. (2017, February 3). Why Human-Centered Design is Critical to Preparing for Global Health Epidemics. Dalberg. https://dalberg.com/our-ideas/why-human-centered-design-critical-preparing-global-health-epidemics/
Black, S.,Torlei, K. (2013). Designing a New Type of Hospital Gown: A User-centered Design Approach Case Study. Fashion Practice, 5(1), 153-160. DOI: 10.2752/175693813X13559997789005
Human-Centred Research and Design in Crisis 
I enjoyed reading about your specific case, tackling the role of clothing in crisis. Most of the time we disregard aspects that are obviously critical – at least for me, providing the right tools for experts to thrive when dealing with sensitive situations is crucial.
What do you think can be done from your perspective to improve the current PPE design?
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I think seeing how clinicians are modifying PPE would be really beneficial to develop new solutions – as they’ve used masks and garments every day, they’d have lots of suggestions how to make these better. Moreover I think even in terms of masks, there should be different sizes, not standard solutions as male and female faces are not the same size. And continuing with these, I’d test even different widths of rubber bands, which are holding masks in place, as the thin ones can cause lots of discomfort really quickly. So for developing better PPE, designers should really collaborate with clinicians and do fieldwork in hospitals to understand the conditions, modifications and needs.
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