Innovation in the home: The new normal of living
Given the current climate of change regarding the situation the world is in due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are able to see our ability as a race to adapt during trying times. As we manoeuvre through the challenges posed by an unprecedented pandemic, we must be cognizant of the fact that this adaptation is with great fear and anxiety. Knowing the emotional undercurrent that is driving this change, we will be better equipped to know which changes will last in the long term.
In this paper, I hope to articulate what this re-ordering of our normal means given that billions of people have gotten a new taste of how important “home” actually is — as a safe haven, a de facto schoolhouse, an impromptu remote office, and a forced, familial psychological petri dish — the spaces we live in, and more importantly what we demand of them, stand to look profoundly different in the post-coronavirus world.[1]
Innovators must look into the changes people are making in their interaction with their homes in order to create a solid value proposition. The home is one of the most difficult places to introduce products into, as it is our most private space and is often shared by more than one individual.
It is important to see how this change in interaction with homes manifests itself in our daily lives. Our ideals for work from home are shifting from an alternative to the only option. This study[2] conducted in the United States suggests that about half the population is engaged in working from home whereas only one-third of jobs can viably be done from home. As work from home becomes the only way to keep businesses running, employers will be looking for ways to make it possible to shift jobs that currently cannot be done from home to the people remotely. Our education systems are currently going through a complete overhaul as many parts of India and most parts of the world simply do not have the infrastructure and planning in order to make learn from home possible. The process of making learning from home a reality starts from the top at the level of curriculum designers and through seamless synthesis with online communication and testing comes to fruition only if students are able to create a conducive environment at home to learn and study. Last but definitely not the least, our ability to function in all spheres of our life depends on one thing at the root — our health. The new normal being defined places key importance to making homes healthier, with regards to physical cleaning and at its essence — human safety.
Our first problem statement that we would like to tackle is — How can we emulate a professional work environment at home through the use of technology?
Through asking working people around the age of 23–40 about their experience with regards to working from home during this time, I have come to certain conclusions. Firstly, people found comfort in being able to design their own schedules and having the flexibility of doing tasks in their own time. This came with a huge drawback — their families were also flexible with their own time and would often cause disturbance while trying to go about their own day. The people interviewed claimed that this kind of disturbance during work led to problems during video conferencing, focusing on the task at hand and a general feeling of unprofessionalism in their workday. Upon further investigation, some individuals even reported feeling very low during the week after the completion of tasks. They felt as if they were unable to separate their work from their home — which previously only meant relaxation. The feeling of not distinguishing between the two made them feel like they never got a break from work even though they were home. Along with feeling lethargic sitting at their desks confined to one spot of the house mixed with the lack of social contact made them feel low during the day.
As innovators, how do we solve such problems? We must look at this from the perspective of the end-user. The problems mentioned above can even be clubbed with some of the problems school and college students face. The environment at home is simply not conducive for collaborating and learning. Let us first begin by tackling the problem of disturbances caused by other members of the family. One may imagine the multitude of tasks that must be completed during the day by all the members of the house as complete chaos. The way to make some sense of this chaos is to make schedules transparent. Making one’s own workflow smarter means making the workflow of those around you also smarter. If we are able to have one application that all the members of the house use to schedule their day and their breaks, the working of the house as a whole would become much smoother. This would allow for quicker communication and make space for the possibility of working individuals scheduling alone time for themselves in the midst of chaos. Not only would this solve the problem of an unprofessional work environment where everyone is jutting into each other’s work, but would also inculcate the idea of personal space even at the level of the home — which is one the tenets of this “new normal”.
If we look back to the demands of the employers — we know that they want the maximum out of their employees when they are working whether it be at home or at the office. In order to deliver at maximum capacity, organisations need their employees at the highest level of health — physical and mental. To tackle the stresses of long hours, innovators have developed passive fitness devices like the Officiser[3] — an active footrest that simulates 70% of the motion of walking.
Wellness company Living Ashram launched a wellbeing app for employees. The subscription app uses a “whole human approach” which guides users through specially-designed practices including mindful breathing, forgiveness, gratitude and “Deeds of Appreciation”. The daily practices can be completed in 2–15 minutes and help employees to regain a feeling of purpose, to counter feelings of disconnection and isolation and to help them connect with other employees. Through the app, businesses can also review analytical reports detailing the use and impact of the programme and access customised workshops on areas of particular interest.
In a time like, companies must not forget the need to manage the stress and anxiety levels of their employees. Apps like these are already doing much of the work that any human resources department could never do — and that is to provide a personal and anonymous way to tackle mental health issues. For innovators, it is necessary to empathise with the end-user to find the problems that have not been tackled before, in order to provide value to the customer. And it is here where innovators thrive, where it is not the simple task of doing what was being done already but in a different place, but doing better than what was being done in the first place. These are the innovations that make an impact and last.
The culmination of these innovations happens in the home. Keeping up with the “new normal” that is taking shape, we can see these innovations give a new level of importance to a previously underlooked part of our lives — the home.
Now we come to our final problem statement — How can we make the home and its occupants safer?
The idea of having a safer home for many means that it is safe from burglars and from any natural calamities. These issues have been tackled multiple times in the past. But those solutions were for different problems. The current pandemic has awakened the realisation in many that the new normal requires our living conditions to take the form of a safe haven against any possible diseases. People have already adopted the habit of using hand sanitizers/ washing their hands and not touching their face constantly. But this is simply the tip of the iceberg, the damage done by this virus will have a far-reaching impact on the psyche of people when it comes to health and sanitation. Below is the process of design thinking called EDIPT. I have used it in order to come up with a plan for how my own home can become safer in these times and beyond.
1. Empathise — I had multiple conversations with my parents and the staff working in and around the house regarding how they think we are at risk of a virus from our home. I tried to summarise the thoughts they had and most of them were trying to say the following –
· Our interaction with the produce that is used in cooking puts us at risk of viruses from outside the confines of our home.
· Given that one of us is to contract a communicable disease it is extremely likely that it will get passed on to others in the house.
· Guests entering the home may have viruses that they unknowingly spread. This may make people unwilling to have guests over even after the lockdown.
· This thinking was also applied to ordering things off e-commerce websites.
2. Define — After hearing these problems from the occupants of the house I was able to better understand the problem for myself and define it further. I am trying to design a system to ensure that people feel safer in their house which allows the home to become a fortress against viruses.
3. Ideate — I tried to think of a large number of ideas and then bounce them off the stakeholders one by one and see their reaction to it. I then leaned down my approach to try and focus on a few ideas.
4. Prototype — After taking influence from how airports and places of work try to reduce any hazardous things entering the premises, the main idea I had was to design simple devices that would be present at entry points of the house. This would mean an electronic thermometer at the front door that would check your temperature and log it in before you enter the home. The second device would be a UV light that is to be used at the entry of the kitchen right after opening grocery bags. This would allow for safe disinfection of the food before it enters our bodies. In each room a simple device measuring heartbeat, temperature and other vitals like respiration rate will be present that would log these vitals on a daily basis.
5. Test — I applied a Jugaad solution to try and test the flow of using this system. I placed a small cardboard box at each of the places where the device was to be placed and make each stakeholder try and go through the movements of scanning before eating, recording their temperature before entering the house etc. This allowed me to understand that this was something that could be adopted without much hassle.
The idea of this design process was to try and understand what the end consumer will be looking for to make their home safer. The process of design thinking allowed me to step into the shoes of the people that would be most impacted by these changes and make small adjustments just by going back and forth.
Through this paper, I have tried to highlight the new normal of the home. Through innovations in the place where we now work, learn, eat, sleep and live — we can truly make an impact on how people deal with the near future. Our values change as we approach this new normal as we assign new degrees of importance to the things that now matter to us more — such is human nature. A pandemic which seems to be all doom and gloom may just provide some of the biggest opportunities for innovators to make tangible change in people’s personal spheres of life.
[1] Taylor, Peter Lane. “Real Estate Will Never Be The Same Post Covid-19.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 24 Apr. 2020, www.forbes.com/sites/petertaylor/2020/04/23/real-estate-development-will-never-look-the-same-post-covid-19-realtors-and-architects-should-pay-attention/#486209126f2a.
[2] Dingel, Jonathan, and Brent Neiman. “How Many Jobs Can Be Done at Home?” BFI, University of Chicago, 11 Apr. 2020, bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/how-many-jobs-can-be-done-at-home/.
[3] “Fitness Tool Allows Movement at Your Desk.” Springwise, 16 Sept. 2019, www.springwise.com/fitness-tool-allows-movement-desk/.
