iN: A Cognitive Patient Care Assistant
Each year thousands of patients suffer from adverse events during hospital stays such as falls, medication errors, procedural errors, and pressure-related injuries. These events are largely attributed to a lack of quality interaction with medical staff.iN is the world's first cognitive patient care assistant. AE Superlab collaborated closely with the teams at Inspiren and the engineers and developers at 10xBeta to develop the exterior look and feel of iN.
Our brief from Inspiren was to create a device enclosure that while perfectly functionally suited for a healthcare environment, would feel more akin to a fixture that one might find in a high-end hotel room. The design needed to provide visual cues alluding to the cutting edge technology contained within, but also to convey a sense of warmth and friendliness.
Precise + Friendly
Given the above direction, we decided that our forms would need to be both soft and precise. Starting with a perfect circle, the most basic and pure of shapes, we began to derive our forms. Eschewing complex or organic derivations we extracted the segments, arcs, lofts, and tangents that would define our firm all from that initial circle. The result is a shape that is pragmatic, deliberate and friendly.
The entire exterior enclosure is then wrapped in a clear polycarbonate second skin. In addition to providing visual depth to the surface of the device, this also allowed us to "float" the front sensor plate over the illuminated "glow-plate". Illumination is the primary way that iN communicates to it's users via both color and intensity, and so great care was taken carefully tune our lighting strategy accordingly. In order to achieve iN's characteristic soft glow, our primary lightsource is tucked away in a recessed cove along the periphery of the device, and allowed to wash gently over the exposed glow-plate. The glow-plate surface is textured with a subtly raised pattern that is designed to capture and bounce the light from the peripheral linear light source and provides additional visual interest to the front of the device.
Iteration and Improvement
Following a successful test phase, widespread recognition, and tremendous interest from the health care industry, we are currently working with the inspiren team on the second iteration of iN incorporating numerous new features that have dictated subtle modifications and refinements to the original design.
