Improving dental care habits of adolescents in Norway
Smiles
Goal
Create and imagine solutions that improves the dental care habits of adolescents in Norway, and add value to the ongoing research project lead by SINTEF. Collaborate with stakeholders and provide creative ideas to the project from a physical device and system design perspective.
My Role
Individual project taken up as an extension to SINTEF led ‘#Care4YoungTeeth<3’ project. My roles included the ideation, conceptualisation, prototyping, visualisation. Ongoing research data was shared by SINTEF and also provided assistance for user testing.
Background
This project is a collaboration with ‘#Care4YoungTeeth<3’ project led by SINTEF, the largest independent research organization in Scandinavia that conducts applied research, technology development, and innovation.
According to Statbank (Statistics Norway) and The Norwegian Directorate of Health, in the period 2016 to 2020, 56% of 14-15 year olds and 71% of 16-18 year olds in Trøndelag to have at least one tooth with filling demanding caries (dentine caries) or fillings, an increased incidence of caries with increasing age.
The average number of teeth and tooth surfaces with caries and fillings also increased with age.
The User
High school adolescents in Norway, around 14-18 years of age.
Ideation
A series of quick sketches were made on three different directions to explore and generate ideas to solve the problem and cater the user need. Ideas were selected from each of the directions to further develop and define into a concept.
Concepts
Created concept boards from the ideas genereated. The concepts are arranged from mild to wild based on the idea. The concepts were further evaluated and selected based on its efficiency and feasibility. Three concepts were selected to be further developed.
User Tests and Feedback
The concepts were shortlisted and selected based on the feedback from the users conducted through a research group ‘Forandringsfabrikken’, led by the organisation SINTEF. The value proposition of each concept was evaluated during the decision making.
Smiles
The companion that reminds adolescents to brush teeth twice a day and follow a better dental routine.
