Are Our Products Sexy?

A mentor once described our work as “not sexy” and I can see what he means, that is if you’re satisfied with judging a book by its cover.

Our design principles embody a radical approach to spending time with people with dementia, developing our ability to observe and understand the person in front of us. So, how complicated does something have to look before we take the thinking behind it seriously?

We make resources for people living with later-stage dementia. They look simple because we have deliberately worked to make them accessible. That simplicity is hard won, and it’s just one of our design principles.

Greg Rowland, who lives with Alzheimer’s, saw something different in them. He said our approach “completely flips traditional models on their head”.

Greg and my mentor were looking at the same products, but Greg has the lived insight to see what we've made.

The thinking behind them, and everything we do, asks a difficult question: when someone cannot take part easily, how much of that difficulty belongs to the dementia, and how much belongs to the way we are trying to connect with them?

The answer changes what we do next. Whether we withdraw the opportunity or change it. Whether we keep testing what someone has lost or make room for what they can experience now. Whether what we notice today helps us offer a better opportunity tomorrow.

Our products and the guidance together give families and carers a way to put that question into practice. We refuse to make them more complicated so that the innovation becomes easier to recognise for those of us living without dementia. The person using them would pay the price for that.