Awardee, HSE Spark Frontline Innovation Award 2022.
Shortlisted, Design for the Frontline Competition 2021.
Iontach is a product which helps motivate an older adult to carry out targeted daily tasks in a simple and independent way in the hope to reduce onset frailty.
Problem
The current Coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately impacted older people. Due to the restrictions imposed on them, they have less access to the outside world leaving them in a vulnerable and lonely position.
From research we have found many people are afraid to continue with their daily routine. Those who are in a position to live alone with daily visits from care workers and family have now been pushed back into seeing so few while some are completely alone, therefor effecting their wellness.
Proposal
As we get older our ability to comprehend basic text decreases as well as our ability to write due to frailty.
My teams concept for the Design for the Frontline project is an adjustable book that doesn’t involve any reading or writing, making it easy for anyone to understand. The book has a page for every day of the week and on these pages are lists of achievable everyday activities.
The name Iontach comes from the Irish language meaning Remarkable. We chose the name Iontach as it was the inspiration for the bubbles which you can ‘remark’ at the end of each day and reuse again.
Every time you complete a certain activity you push down on the bubble in that specific section. This is a way of identifying that you have completed the task without having to write.
Iontach provides an opportunity to stay healthy.
Sustainability
Our design is more sustainable than a regular journal as you can reuse this book over and over again. By pushing down on a bubble on the activity side, it pushes a bubble out on the reset side and visa versa. This way you can easily reset the information every week.
App Design
It was important to us to try include family members in this product while still keeping it personal to the user so we created the Iontach App for family members to go along with the book.
The app’s purpose is to save the information from the book on your phone so that you can look back on progress, if you wish to do so. We wished to keep technology separate from the physical book as 60% of those surveyed said they are not confident with technology.
We believe Iontach can help the user deal with frailty and gain wellbeing as its goal is to give gentle reminders to complete their chosen daily task while still regaining independence.
Team: Katie O'Brien, Kate McKenna, Gian Nollora
Software: Miro, Fusion 360, Figma, Adobe illustrator, Photoshop