Case Owner
The project revolves around a specific case of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). The assigned case owner is represented under the anonymous name of Lisa. The case owner identity will remain private. Following the research, a one-hour interview was conducted with our case to get to know her and her condition.
Meet Lisa
Lisa is a woman of about 60 years of age. What identifies her is her strong work ethic, her love for sustainability and being outdoors. Together with her partner and their dog, she lives in a large house with a large garden. As an independent woman she likes to stay physical and keep herself busy. She lives somewhat of a traditional lifestyle, doing tasks herself and with her partner with little to low technology based products. She is not a big fan of technology. Lisa likes to do activities that cost a lot of physical energy. Nowadays it makes her happy she can do things such as shopping, cooking and cleaning the house, by herself.
Lisa has had health problems since youth which always involved tiredness and muscle pains. Her latest diagnosis is a lung condition called sarcoidosis that can show in different ways. For Lisa it mainly shows in problems with fatigue. If she is too active in a short time or not active enough her condition worsens. Her resilience is not as strong as it used to be. She has to rest every 2 hours by putting aside her task and take a break. Accordingly, starting up in the morning is quite difficult. Next to fatigue, Lisa has muscle pains, unstable body temperature and dry eyes.
Lisa’s condition has had a big impact on her life. It influences her on a variety of aspects, resulting in downsizing her entire life. For example she has to work less, her social life became smaller and she has less energy for her hobbies like home decoration, gardening and her dog.
Lisa wants to be self-sufficient but does not have the energy or strength anymore. Her world is getting smaller. The aspects she does not want to get smaller, get smaller and it is annoying to her. She wonders, how can you manage yourself as sustainable as possible with less energy and strength?
-
Bio: Woman, 60 years old, Work ethic
-
Likes: Sustainability, Outside, Dog, Walking, Physical activity, Gardening, Painting, Home decoration, Self-sufficiency, Associations, Voluntary work
-
Dislikes: Technology
-
Issues: Fatigue, Muscle pains, Unstable body temperature, Dry eyes
-
Current help: Breaks, Downsizing life
Visual Summary
At the first (in person) meeting with Lisa we held an interview to get to know her, what her interest are and her specific case. During this interview notes were taken and organized to create a representation and overview of Lisa's current situation. The visual representation emphasizes the importance of certain aspects in her life.
Conclusion
With getting to know Lisa, more insight was gained of how she experiences and handles her chronic fatigue. Her main points of low energy and muscle pain are factors that were kept in mind when going in to ideation and thinking of ideas to help her. Having her likes in mind, a rough selection of the topics dog, walking, outdoor activity, gardening and self-sufficiently and sustainability were used.
Meeting Lisa was a great way to not only get to know her condition, but also her as a person. Since Lisa's life was a big focus for this product. The interview opened doors to being able to do more research and create more ideation. More about the ideation can be seen on the co-design pages.