Studiohead have been successful in the Design Council’s most recent Design Challenge. Together with Louise Wilson, Ifung Lu and Meike Walcha, we entered a proposal to create a brand new tool to help families living with dementia. The tool, provisionally called Grouple, will be a combination of a website and physical products that help families and friends co-ordinate their care for someone with Dementia.

At the heart of the concept is the idea that we can make caring and sharing for someone with dementia more accessible and less daunting for people on the periphery of the care network, and that by providing the tools to do this, we can enhance the lifestyle of the person with dementia and relieve the pressure on their primary carers.

You can see an animation of our original concept here. We have made it public in order to gain feedback, so don’t be shy with your comments.

We are at the start of this very exciting project, and we will be undertaking considerable user-research to refine and improve our ideas, and will be producing a prototype for public display at the end of March.

We are undertaking this challenge with support from BT Innovate & Design, and Jewish Care.

We will keep this news page and our facebook page updated as the project develops, so do check back regularly.

For more information on the Challenge, and to read about the four other successful proposals please visit www.designcouncil.org.uk/dementia

Studiohead have just completed a new website for Events and Consulting company Unwired Ventures. Unwired specialise in creating events and knowledge centred on the worlds of work and technology, advising some of the world’s best known organisations. Their new website needed to reflect the forward thinking nature of their business, be simple to keep up to date with their ever-growing global events calendar, and embrace all that is new in the world of social networking.

We designed an understated, but elegant background and layout, to make full use of photographic content, an expandable, newspaper style front page, and a simple, consistent top-bar navigation…

Not only does the site help promote new events, but we have set up WorkTech TV, to show some of the best talks from previous events…

View the site at unwired.eu.com

Studiohead and Imperial College Division of Surgery are holding a public performance at the Camden Arts Centre on Sunday 19th June.

We will explore through Simulation and Improvised Music what happens when you have a heart attack, and are rushed by ambulance to a Catheter Lab to have an artery unblocked.

Quite Spectacular is series of live, heart stopping, surgical demonstrations by the Imperial College medical school and designers Studiohead, staged to co-incide with Christine Borland’s explorations into the use of the human body in medical science.

You are having a heart attack. Your life is passed from hand to hand as you are rushed into hospital by ambulance. You find yourself lying on a bed, while a surgeon inserts a wire into your leg. You are scared, but you witness a miracle, you watch someone saving your life.

The afternoon sees Camden Arts Centre playing host to the ‘inflatable operating theatre’ simulating the angiogram procedure. Visitors will be able to watch the entire process and even take part to experience what it is like to put your life in someone else’s hands or even insert a virtual stent into yourself.

Performances at 1.00pm | 2.00pm | 3.00pm

For more information and to reserve a space:
http://www.camdenartscentre.org/talksandevents/?id=101093

A supervisor in turn controls the simulated patient’s conditions via a remote on an iPod touch, up to 10 meters away.

The iPads are an intrinsic part of a simulated anaesthetic stack (ventilation machine) that we have specially created, that also includes the simulation of the manual breathing action (bagging) that an anaesthetist may do for a patient.

This prototype will add a significant new functionality to the Distributed Simulation project we are undertaking with Imperial College London. The beta prototype is due to be demonstrated at the AMEE conference in Glasgow next week. Check back here for an update in the coming days…

Studiohead design partners Cian Plumbe and Matt Harrison took the Distributed Simulation project to the Health Proffesions Education 2009 conference in Toronto in May.

The work was presented by Dr. Roger Kneebone of Imperial College School of Medicine in a workshop, and in his gala-dinner keynote speech in Frank Gehry’s Art Gallery of Ontario.

Matt and Cian went to contribute to the event by explaining the design philosophy behind the Distributed Simulation to leading thinkers in the target market for this product.

A full medical simulation of a central line insertion was performed for the audience within the DS environment, configured to represent an intensive care unit. This was held in the splendid surroundings of the University of Toronto’s Oxbridge style debates room. The audience and participants were successfully drawn into a believable and tense simulation.

The DS concept was met with general enthusiasm, resulting fruitful discussions and purchase enquiries. Toronto University is widely recognised for its work on simulation in medical education, and its was great to share our work and get feedback from these experts.

Toronto is an excellent city, and I highly recommend a visit. If you go, do check out the Distillery district. It is a converted distillery that is now home to a host of design, art and theatre activities.

4 june 2009, telegraph magazine, fashion supplement:

“This summer’s hottest beach flats, Dopie sandals (the result of a two-year collaboration between the industrial engineer Matthew Harrison [Studiohead] and Terra Plana) offer the feet almost invisible support: the sole folds up between the big and second toe. So there are no straps to mess up your foot tan, but if you need extra support there is an optional strap that goes over the top of the foot. In pink, yellow, turquoise, red, orange, green and white. £25,lovethoseshoes.com.”

click here to see this at : telegraph.co.uk

Studiohead’s Matt Harrison led a creative team in Sarajevo to create this unique ladies leather bag.

Maja Torba uses the high quality leather work of Damir Huseinovic, in combination with a variety of fabrics created by the other members of the centre. The result is a simple design, but one that allows each bag produced to be unique and highly treasured.

The design is a simple ladies two pocket shoulder bag with detachable straps. The bag can be ‘inverted’ so that the exterior surface is either the simple, elegant and durable leather, or the highly individual and vibrant hand-painted silk.

The straps can also be attached to the bag in a variety of combinations, to maximise the comfort of the bag to as many people and as many situations as possible. The design allows for single or double shoulder support, expansion and contraction of the bag, and back-pack style wearing.

The workshop was part of the All-inclusive Sarajevo project, run by Julia Cassim at the Helen Hamlyn Centre, and funded by the British Council.

see more photos of the project here