Hello all,
I am starting a project that aims to help those with Raynaud’s Disease and am having trouble deciding on a target market. I have gotten some great advice from my classmates and teacher in critique, but would love to hear the opinion of other designers. Here is some background on Raynaud’s if you are not familiar or please skip past the image for where I am most confused.
- Cause > body reduces circulation in the extremities in the cold > blanching (whitening) of fingers/toes and numbness. A small (5%) percentage of Raynaud’s is caused by stress, where the body also reduces circulation.
- Severity: (mild) can affect just the tip of a single finger to (moderate) reduced blood flow in more fingers and toes to (severe) risk of frostbite and gangrene after prolonged numbness.
- Setting doesn’t have to be excessively cold. Many experience Raynaud’s attacks at work, in class, or at the grocery store, for example.
- 15% of women between 15 and 40 in colder climates are the most common to have Raynaud’s Disease, while about 3-5% of the world population has it.
There are a good amount of products out there that help people with cold hands and cold feet, but they have their drawbacks. Also, as far as I can tell, there are no products focused on helping Raynaud’s in particular (medication and rarely surgery, rather than physical devices).
The general trend that I’m seeing is that most products are focused on keeping one’s hands warm in the cold (does that qualify as a ‘duh’ statement!) and naturally decrease the amount of things you can do with your hands. Hand coverings like gloves and mittens interfere mostly with finger use, while dedicated hand-warmers need to be held directly, so you cannot do much with that hand (imagine typing, driving, or walking the dog, while carrying an iPod-sized thing in your hand). Feet warmers are less common but are not as critical in the dexterity sense – one can layer socks and use warmers in the foot because toe use is not an issue like finger use.
I see more of a need and opportunity for something that keeps one’s hands warm indoors, because there is simply more that one would need hand/finger dexterity for indoors, and sufferers of Raynaud’s often do have cold fingers indoors. Or rather, you probably don’t need to use your fingers too often outdoors in the dead of winter, so there is not too much to improve with the outdoor hands/foot market.
I was planning to target this product line towards the most common victims of Raynaud’s – women age 15-40 (probably narrowed down within that) and who have mild to moderate symptoms. Since this is targeting the medical condition itself, I was hoping to propose that it be sold as a medical device line (think higher-end hearing aids / diabetes tester), rather than the lower end hand-warmers now are sold at sports stores, Wal-mart, and online. Ideally, it would not be expensive, but I think that something that allows dexterity and non-obtrusiveness while still being effective at heating would cost more than current warmers.
In the initial feedback that I got in class, most people thought it would be better to target an “extreme” user group like sports users – such as snowboarding and skiing, and that from there, more general consumers would follow. However, I really do see more of an opportunity for a line of indoor solutions for young/middle age women because of the dexterity + warm need, and I have a hard time imaging that anything for outdoor sports wouldn’t just be redesigning a glove …
I would really appreciate any advice that you might have, no matter how brief! This is a longer term project, finishing in December, and I am in the earlier stages now – surveys, interviews, research, and early ideation/model-making, and please let me know if it would be helpful to see more as it progresses.
Thank you for any help!
Robbie
Thanks to the Noun Project (thenounproject.com) for some icon help:
Copy Hand designed by Naomi Atkinsonfrom The Noun Proje
Copy Clock designed by Dmitry Baranovskiy from The Noun Project
Copy Cloud designed by Adam Whitcroft from The Noun Project