AirHealth:
Flow like the wind
Attaining a place among the top 12 teams in the the 2021 FourC Challenge 24Hour Design Charrette Contest held by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, my team's solution, Airhealth, is an air ambulance for our speculated future where
Work-from-Home is the default
The fully online competition included more than 55 groups, comprising of students from 52 universities around the world, including Harvard University, Northwestern University, Rochester Institute of Technology, National University of Singapore, Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, etc.
Details
Tools: Illustrator, Photoshop, Figma, Miro, Feishu
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Timeline: 24 hours
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Project type: Design Competition (group)
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Role: User Experience Designer: storyboarding, user journeys and service blueprint
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Skills: Interaction Design, User Experience, Speculative Design, Product Design, Interdisciplinary collaboration
Project summary
Brief:
The sudden epidemic has pressed the world’s “pause button”, and we are still eager for an orderly opening after blockade and isolation, and together we welcome the world to flow and connect again. Create a product, service, and/or space in response to the concept of “Flow” in the post-pandemic world.
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What we did:
We interpreted the idea of flow in terms of mental health. We speculated that as Work-from-Home (WFH) becomes the default, the isolation and loneliness felt during the lockdown would worsen severely from prolonged diminished human and social contact. We decided to create a system to address this potential problem.
Process
Ideation
Understanding
Summary of 5W mapping
We began ideating and considering solutions of various scales, from a therapy car in the product scale to redesigning cities in the urban planning scale. Understanding that the future holds technology far beyond our expectations, we pushed the idea of the therapy car to be congruous with dense highrise megacities and WFH future; what if the therapy car could fly instead? We adopted 5 Es framework (Entice, Enter, Engage, Exit, and Extend) to facilitate quick empathy mapping.
Our group started with thoroughly breaking down the idea of “Flow” in various contexts by first doing a wide research to understand the various possible interpretations. After exploring many concepts, including disruption to public transportation, blurring of work and personal space, and dense cities becoming virus hotspots, our group decided on our interpreation of flow being mental health being disrupted due to Working from Home becoming the norm.
Discussion through Feishu docs
Define
Our group delved deeper into the the topic of mental health by defining the problem.
Given the 24 hour constraint, we focused on 5W1H, focusing heavily on “Why” and allowing it to form the pillars for the “Who”, “Where”, “What”, “When”, and “How”, which would ultimately be our solution.
Plan view of the Air Ambulance
Prototyping
Having settled on the Air Ambulance idea, we progressed simultaneously on four fronts. I was responsible for the last aspect, the experience design and tying the system together
1. Physical design of the Air Ambulance
3. UIUX experience of the connecting mobile app
2. Site study of case study city, Shanghai
4. User experience of the Airhealth system
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While my groupmates focused on the three other aspects, I focused on the journey that the user would experience. I mapped the possible emotions of the user as he goes through the process of feeling depressed, booking an air ambulance, waiting for its arrival, boarding it, and being dropped off.
To ensure that the system is feasible, both the front end, how the service would appear to the user, and back end, how the data is managed to enable the system to function, were mapped to create a integrated system that is flows seamlessly. The various touchpoints that the user would encounter was also considered
Outcome
In the future, work from home is the norm. The days and night blend into one as the distinction between working and non-working hours blur. Office workers become isolated in their apartments without any physical human contact
Living in an endless cycle of work, it is easy to feel overwhelmed and stressed so help is made accessible with the accompanying AirHealth app. Automatic deployment of air ambulances occur when unusual amount of stress and anxiety are detected through a wearable. Alternatively, the user can manually book a session.
The accompany app arranges for an air ambulance to be deployed from one of the several take-off points around the city, prioritizing those with urgent serious conditions during peak hours
The air ambulance comes to fetch users right from their window, making it as convenient and hassle-free as possible.
In the air ambulance, users are transported into a calming atmosphere that allows them to relax and unwind, with a psychiatrist at hand to be a listening ear and enable the user to feel cherished again. The air ambulance will fly around scenic routes of the city and pass by green areas to supplement the therapy session
At the end of the trip, the user is returned directly to his apartment and his app updates his session records which enables the system to better understand his new baseline and when to proactively call for an air ambulance for him
This project was done for the 2021 FourC 24Hour Design Charrette Contest with group members:
Greta Weber (Politecnico di Milano)
Jonathan Lau (National University of Singapore)
Pan XianJie (Huazhong Agricultural University)
Yao Chang (Shanghai JiaoTong University)