Ode

Ode is Rodd's latest social innovation and a venture partnership with The Olfactory Experience. We have created an inclusive, simple to use wellbeing product to reawaken appetite, engagement with food, and nutritional awareness for people living with dementia.


The design-led venture and has been funded and supported through the Living Well with Dementia Design Challenge, a competition being run by the Design Council and the Department of Health to rethink life with dementia.


This short film gives an overview of the insights and intentions.



Anyone that would like to know more about ode or would like to contact either of the partners can do so here at myode.org

Rodd and Olfactory Experience to develop innovative new concept to improve life with dementia

We are pleased to announce that Rodd and partners Olfactory Experience have been selected by the Department of Health and the Design Council as one of 5 successful teams to develop innovative product and services to improve the quality of life for those living with Dementia.


The announcement was made today by the Department of Health and the Design Council which will award the teams a share of £360,000 to design and develop prototypes of their ideas.

A million people in the UK will be living with dementia by 2012 and one in three of us who live to 65 will have some form of the condition. The 'Living Well with Dementia' project aims to develop the next generation of products and services, drive innovation and stimulate the market, in a bid to improve the quality of life for those with dementia, their families and carers.

Our proposition 'Scent Clock’ is a home scent-device to stimulate appetite and enhance nutritional status in dementia. The device will look to increase the likelihood of eating, reducing the issues of weight loss, dehydration, fatigue and malnutrition that people with dementia experience.

We will blog about the project as it develops, with final prototypes unveiled in the Spring.

Rodd establish new links to address the nutritional needs of older adults

Rodd have formed a new partnership with AgeUK and VISION Culture to explore Service Design opportunities that address the nutritional needs of the UKs older adults.

More project details will be announced later in the year.

Rodd are creating service design propositions that break the malnutrition cycle amongst older adults.

Rodd have been selected by the Design Council/Technology Strategy Board to develop innovative service design propositions that lead to increased independence and improved quality of life amongst the UK's over 65's.

This article from the Telegraph gives an overview of the problem.

Great workshop over...

....now willing my flight home to arrive.

Both Ben & Pete schools make the finals

Rodd Directors have helped two schools reach the finals of National design competitions.

Both schools will present their design proposals to a judging panel at the Design Museum later this week.

A full blog post to follow.

Calm before the storm

A beautiful sunny morning at the studio.

Expecting a full-on Ideation day today with colleagues and visitors.




Pic/ Morning Sun. Chart House


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Rodd included in the '50 Best Blogs for Industrial Design Students'

Rodd has been included in the top '50 Blogs for Industrial Design students'.... which is fantastic! If you want to see who else is on the list hit the jump.

More about Rodd and our user centred approach.

Rodd Directors appointed as Design Ambassadors by the Design Council

Alongside our current commercial commissions at Rodd, Peter and I have been asked by the Design Council to support two national schemes as Design Ambassadors to Schools.

Peter's work is part of the Schools ‘Water Challenge’, an initiative that is exploring ways in which water consumption can be reduced, and mine, ‘Keeping Connected’, is helping to improve the way older adults connect to younger people, their community and the wider world by using service design.

Both challenges are aimed at Key Stage 3 students with members of the professional Design industry providing support and mentorship. The schemes are part of a national competition due to complete in July 2011.

You can follow my involvement on the Keeping Connected challenge here over the coming weeks.

Read more about Rodd and our work in the field of user centred design.

Contact Rodd/ 

Rodd Design - Ben on the Judging Panel at the 'Include' 24Hr Inclusive Design Challenge

The team at Rodd has long been associated with Inclusive Design and specifically the Helen Hamlyn Research Centre's great Inclusive Design Challenge format. However to date we have fielded participating teams and even reigned victorious as a team leader of multinational teams of academics and design professionals in both Japan and Korea, but to be asked to be part of a judging panel at this years Include Conference at London's Royal College of Art was the ultimate accolade!

The challenge format in this case was a gruelling 24 Hour design challenge by teams of international design professionals, many of whom had not met before the start of the event never mind work together! Each team was partnered with an design partner whose role was to help the team see the world through their lives.

The teams were working to a brief of 'People Power' and could use design to create inclusive opportunities for product, service, graphics or infrastructure; in fact any discipline or embodiment that they felt appropriate.

As part of a panel of judges consisting of Michael Wolff (Chair), Emily Campbell - RSA, Lee Bazalgette - Factory Design, John Corcoran - Wire Design we had the task of selecting the evenings winner from six truly inspiring solutions. Ideas ranged from a zone of urban tranquillity to an app for recording snippets of sound and image that served as a social way finding tool. Each team had adopted the user centric approach with ease and delivered beautifully executed solutions under some pretty extreme conditions - however the audience prize went to team '10 Collective' and their concept 'Memo'. A tech solution which embeds metaphorical DNA onto your 'Chip and Pin' card - which allows the interface on the receptacle device to adjust to suite your needs, opportunities such as language, service customisation as well as the more obvious eyesight impairment were proposed.

However the judging panel felt that 'The Centre for Smoother Journeys' with their multi-format, smart phone game, 'Street Wheels' was the overall winner. The team had spent the day with a wheel chair user to understand the city from his perspective. Rather than address the literal urban infrastructure they chose to embrace skill of the 'wheeler' and created a cityscape game that allows players to select a wheel vehicle of their choice.

The challenge is to tour the city in the fastest time possible, and in doing so, the player gains points, powers to improve the landscape (both for speed improvements and structures that can be used for performing stunts and tricks) and access to new wheels of their choice, each requiring more skill than the last with which to travel around. Not unsurprisingly the top of the difficulty pinnacle was the wheel chair.

The panel commended the positive, fun and imaginative twist on disability.

Rodd - launch Armlock and Lupin at the HomeOffice.

Last week Pete and I were invited to see three of our Design Council projects - Tie, Armlock and Lupin showcased at the HomeOffice. The work, part of a three year study, brought together the Design Council, the professional Design community and the Government to explore how simple design interventions can positively effect big social issues such as crime.

Our work focussed on 'hot-products' high on the thieves list - such as mobile phones and bicycles. Other projects explored aggravated crime with objects such as the pint glass, as well as attitudinal shifts towards crime amongst young adults in inner city Glasgow.

The projects were extremely well received by industry and policy makers alike. It's just a question of time before some of these ideas reach Market and start to make inroads into crime reduction.

Bike Theft Challenge

Ok, so there goes four weeks! We have been briefed, innovated, prototyped, refined, reviewed and modelled two bike security concepts - 'Lupin' and 'Armlock'! (More details next week)

Ok, so the only thing left to do now is lock up and go home. Design Council pitch day tomorrow. Wish us luck!

Bike Challenge - 48hrs to go!

Beautiful blue Hampshire day, models arrived on a 9:00am courier, Adam in the workshop on 'finishing' duty, Mark and I building our presentation....

You are what you eat...

Followers of Rodd will know we have a keen interest in food - from the products we design for the kitchen and dining table, to making it and most importantly eating it! 


The 'IKEA - Homemade is best' recipe book caught our eye a few months ago but has now been shortlisted for a category at this years Brit Insurance Graphics Award 2011. Not only is it a striking deconstruction of some awesome looking Swedish baking but is also partnered with an app (well what isn't!) that tells you just how much exercise you need to do to work off said Swedish baking!

Read more about IKEA - Homemade is best


Read more about Rodd's Divide Equally portion control concepts or watch our Divide Equally insight video here.

Design Council name check...

Lovely name check and big-up from our friends at the Design Council this morning regarding our bike theft challenge. Guess it's only fair as we haven't slept for the last three weeks. ;-)

Sneaker Pimps....

Guess this latest offering from Stance has a US bias...... Core 77 describes it as, "A fascinating mashup of two worlds, Stance is a project by Delroy Dennisur that brings together the DIY designer toy community with the sneaker culture".

Last time I painted Plaster of Paris toys they looked like this

I wish.....

I found this after a tweet by IDEO's Tom Hulme. Great collection of ideas based around a simple wish list format.

http://theinternetwishlist.com/

Cow, Pirate, Cyclist RIP 2011

From Creative Review...

Charming advertising characters are thin on the ground these days, so it is with some sadness that we discover Cravendale has decided to kill off the quirky group of housemates that has graced its ads for the last four years...

The ads were directed by Belgian directing duo Pic Pic Andre. To view more of their work, including a trailer for their film A Town Called Panic , visit Not To Scale's website. 

Independence Matters

Out of sync chronologically but a inspiring morning at the Independence Matters kick off session.