VW

AN INTERACTIVE FURNITURE PIECE FOR OCD RECOVERY

CONTENTSPOPULATION RESEARCH

CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT Sketch exploration Sketch evolution Concept Design & Model

CONSTRUCTION

FINAL PROTOTYPE Details

WALK-THROUGH

BIBLIOGRAPHY

3-5

7-15 8-9 10-11 12-13 14-15

17-19

21-25 23-25

27-29

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POPULATION RESEARCH

CONTENTS

OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER

FAST FACTS

Ranks in the top 10 of the most disabling illnesses of any kind, in terms of lost earnings and diminished quality of life.

Affects males and females equally.

On average begins for men during late adolescence and women during their early twenties.

A person often waits an average of 10–15 years between symptoms developing and seeking treatment.

50% of all cases, will fall into the severe category, with less than 25% being classed as mild cases.

MENTAL BEHAVIORS

Obsessions = persistent and uncontrollable thoughts, images, impulses, worries, fears or doubts

Thoughts interfere with the ability to function on a daily basis because they are difficult to ignore.

Examples:

PHYSICAL BEHAVIORS

Compulsions = repetitive physical behaviors or mental thought rituals that are performed in an attempt to relieve the anxiety from obsessions

Examples:

Irrational worry about dirt, germs, or contamination

Excessive concern with order, arrangement, or symmetry

Preoccupation with losing or throwing away objects with little or no value

Feeling overly responsible for the safety of others

Cleaning - Repeatedly washing one’s hands, bathing, or cleaning household items, often for hours at a time

Checking - Checking and several to hundreds of times a day that the doors are locked, the stove is turned off, etc

Repeating - Inability to stop repeating a name, phrase, or simple activity

Hoarding - Difficulty throwing away useless items such as old newspapers or magazines, bottle caps, or rubber bands

Touching and arranging

Mental rituals - Endless reviewing of conversations, counting

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UNCOVEREDCASE STUDIES

“It’s a full time job for me to live.”

15-year-old fears her whole family is contaminated and can’t sit near her mother let alone touch or hug her family members. She had to move out of her house because the fear and anxiety was so overwhelming.

A man feared touching others because he believed he would contaminate them and if they were to get sick he would be at fault.

A boy has obsessions where he must gnaw at doors, floors, or other dirty surfaces to relieve the anxiety from intrusive thoughts that if he doesn’t he or his family will be kidnapped or harmed.

A man’s rituals of cleaning (showering multiple times, washing hands multiple times, doing laundry 5+ times), and counting (how much money he has/spent when shopping) led him to depression.

TREATMENTS

Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) = focuses on examining the relationships between obsessive thoughts and compulsions

Exposure & Response Prevention Therapy (ERP) = type of CBT that treats OCD by habituating sufferers to their anxieties through repeated exposure until they are no longer affected.

Sessions last from 50-90 minutes with 12-20 sessions until recovery.

Patients are prevented from engaging in rituals or compulsions during the exposure.

Exposure exercises in session allow the patient and therapist to process anxieties and behaviors in real time.

The more anxious one is the more helpful the therapist can be in addressing symptoms.

MARKET RESEARCH

There are little to no products available for sufferers of OCD. Most products are organization products that use the term colloquially, not diagonostically.

Examples:

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CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

SKETCH EXPLORATION

I began sketching with the idea of supporting the behaviors of people with OCD including touch avoidance, hoarding tendencies, and desires for order, exactness, and cleanliness.

C. Smooth Forms for easy cleaning

B. Storage with removable pieces for easy cleaning

A. Coverable storage for reduced clutter

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SKETCH EXPLORATION

D. Modular storage units

E. Modular storage F. Seating and storage

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SKETCH EVOLUTION

“Those suffering from obsessions or compulsions want to know one thing and one thing only; how to stop OCD.” Reading this changed the trajectory of concept development from supporting OCD behaviors to helping treat them through exposure and response prevention therapy.

A. Beginning piece is neat, but non-functional. Person must remove pieces to make the piece functional, but reveals a disordered form.

B. Person must tilt to off-balance, anxiety inducing direction to make shelf functional.

C. Play with sense of balance to induce anxiety

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SKETCH EVOLUTION

C. Play with sense of balance to induce anxiety

D. Therapy seat has feared/contaminated person sit near patient, as patient progresses in treatment they can fold down pieces of the seat to be closer to the feared person.

E. Person must work with another to reorder and assemble this unit to make it functional

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CONCEPT

The basis of Exposure & Response Prevention Therapy is to have the person with OCD directly confront their anxieties. The concept of VW is to provide hands on exposure to nonfunctional chaos in order to help overcome debilitating obsessions and compulsions.

Because one of the most common obsessions is contamination I centered the design around person-person interaction. I chose to create a shelving unit to limit and organize the behavior of hoarding. The crooked, non-functional shelving provides the motive to touch and move the shelves (addressing fear of contamination), while the labor involved in assembling the piece to its resolved form requires another person (addressing the fear of contamination from other people). The interaction is intended to take place with a therapist present to help discuss anxieties as they are encountered.

Confront obsessions with cleanliness, hoarding, and order by providing an interactive furniture unit that exposes the patient to these anxieties.

Use one obsession (desire for neatness & order) to conquer another (fear of contamination).

Make movable pieces easy to move and fit together.

Create a resolved form that is safe, functional, and aesthetically balanced.

GOALS

RESOLVED DISORDER.

1.

2.

3.

4.

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CONCEPT EXPLORATION

FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS BEHAVIORTask may be too easy for 2 people to carry out, want them to communicate while working together, perhaps instructions should be minimal.

Involves working with another person. This allows them to face a common anxiety of thinking they will or will be contaminated by another person, or will do harm to them.

FORMCurrently it sits on top of a table but that poses too many unforeseeable errors with the variability of where people choose to place it.

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MATERIALS LISTMaple plywood 3/4 inMaple plywood 1/2 inMaple plywood 1/4 inBungee cords 18 inWood glueNailsScrews for support beams CAD FRONT VIEW CAD SIDE VIEW

1.2.3.4.5.6.7.

This form idea came from turning the card-board model upward to make interaction and assembly more intensive.

DESIGN

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MODEL

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CONSTRUCTION

CUTTINGPIECES

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ASSEMBLY

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FINAL PROTOTYPE

SIDEFRONT

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BOTTOM & TOP SHELF DETAILS

SIDEVIEW CLOSED

STARTING SHELVES

SHELF SLOTS

SUPPORT BEAMS TOP SHELF CLOSEUP TOP SHELF SLOT23

BUNGEE HINGE FEATUREA safety precaution to prevent pinching and injuries if a door were to close on the user’s hand. The bungee stretches causing the door to move around the hand, rather than compressing it.

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STRUCTURAL CONSEQUENCE

Because the bungees stretch, the doors move flexibly and the top shelves wobble from side to side. This instability creates a level of anxiety the user has to confront while the piece is in its resolved form.

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WALK-THROUGH

Person 2 removes crooked shelves to make the piece functional: Person 2 has to confront fear of unfamiliar object contamination while resolving anxiety from disorder2

Person 1 (assistant/source of contamination) opens and holds door for Person 2 (patient with OCD)

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Can use shelves as benchmarks of progress and break points if overwhelmed

Assembly becomes easier from 1st to 3rd shelf as anxiety increases

Person with OCD overcomes anxieties

Person 1 and 2 assemble shelves: Person 2 must confront fear of contamination by another person through close interaction

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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ABCNews. (Jun. 2007). “Living with OCD.” ABCNews. http://abcnews.go.com/US/video?id=3235103

ABCNews. (May. 2014). “Overcoming OCD: The Children Who Break Away.” ABCNews. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/over-coming-ocd-children-break-23826782

ABCNews. (Nov. 2013). “The Strange Rituals of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.” ABCNews. http://abcnews.go.com/2020/video/strange-rituals-obsessive-compulsive-disorder-20911733

ADAA. (2010). Symptoms of OCD. Anxiety and Depression Association for America.http://www.adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/symptoms

Eisen, J., Mancebo, M., Pinto, A., Coles, M., Pagano, M., Stout, R., & Rasmussen, S. (2006). Impact of obsessive-compulsive disor-der on quality of life. Comprehensive Psychiatry. 47 (4) 270-275.

Ellison, C. (Aug, 2009). “Compulsion: Where Object Meets Anxiety.” The Design Observer Group. http://designobserver.com/fea-ture/compulsion-where-object-meets-anxiety/10427/

Goodman, W. (1989). The Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale. Arch Gen Psychiatry. http://www.stlocd.org/handouts/YBOC-Symptom-Checklist.pdf

OCD-UK. (2013). Understanding Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. OCD-United Kingdom. http://www.ocduk.org/ocd

Kelly, Owen. (2013). “Exposure Therapy for OCD.” About Health. http://ocd.about.com/od/treatment/a/Exposure-Therapy-For-Ocd.htm

Stengler-Wenzke, K., Kroll, M., Riedel-Heller, S., Matschinger, H., & Angermeyer, M. (2007). Quality of Life in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: The Different Impact of Obsessions and Compulsions. Psychopathology. 40(5), 282-9.

VW

The name VW was chosen for the similarity between the form of the letters and the form of the piece. The piece looks like a V and an inverted V. However, the extra lines on the W throw off the symmetry. Much like the piece itself the letters are almost

perfectly aligned, but slightly off.