Client: Andrew Sijan, University of Edinburgh

Product: Novel personal alarm for the elderly

The situation: With more and more elderly people wanting to live in their own homes rather than in care, a team from the University of Edinburgh recognised the need for a smarter personal alarm. They had developed a new alarm system with 2-way voice communication, speech recognition and speech synthesis, incorporating technology to allow for unmanned call centres. Having carried out some preliminary market research, they approached Mountain Ash Consulting to trial this technology demonstrator and obtain user feedback before developing the beta version.

Mountain Ash Consulting's role: Our key aim was to demonstrate the new alarm's broad 'fit-for-purpose', to determine whether the new alarm works well in actual use conditions, and what improvements might be required.

Implementation: The approach initially involved semi-structured interviews with elderly people still living in their own homes to identify some of the issues concerning safety and welfare. This was followed up by telephone interviews to gauge a response on a wider scale. We then recruited a number of users, trained them in the use of the device and had them try it out over a period of a week with instructions to wear the alarm at certain times and initiate calls for assistance. A call logging system was set up to monitor the results of the incoming calls.

At the end of this period the results from the logging system were analysed in conjunction with the questionnaires returned by the users. Follow up interviews were held with the users to determine the 'Voice of the Customer' as input into the Quality Function Deployment matrix and ultimately providing input for the design requirements for the next version.

Results: The final report outlined the implications for the alarm system, including the required functionality for a new design, the physical properties, the Man Machine Interface requirements and the optimal communications technology to be used by Andrew's team.

"This was a proof of concept project and there were many parameters and features that we could build into a personal alarm device. It was key, therefore, to get feedback from users at the earliest opportunity, before committing to the prototype phase of work. Rowan's study was key to establishing what was important for us to focus on."