Hasta La Ideas

Over the next months we will be highlighting award-winning projects and ideas from this year’s Core77 Design Awards! For full details on the project, jury commenting and more information about the awards program, go to Core77DesignAwards.com

Designer: Artefact – Jennifer Darmour
Location: Seattle, Washington, USA
Category: Speculative Objects/Concepts
Award: Professional Runner-Up

Modwells – Personal Modules for Wellness

Modwells is a personal healthcare system that helps us improve our physical and emotional health, for a better quality of life. “Mods” is a set of wearable sensors that collect and assess health data, providing feedback and alerts to help manage and share health goals and connect with healthcare professionals.

With Modwells we were looking to apply some of the principles that constitute a new approach to design, which we’re calling “21st Century Design.” One of the core principles is autonomy or human liberty, which is the belief that every individual should be able to make their own choices about their own life free from overbearing religious and political authority—we need to aim for a self-aware form of autonomy, informed by a deeper appreciation of the foundations, possibilities and frailties of human nature. 21st Century Design recognizes that changing a person’s context is a much more powerful and effective way of shaping behavior than attempting to change one’s mind.

Core77: What’s the latest news or development with your project?
The project was an entry point for us to start thinking about the medical space in relation to personal wellness. Currently, it’s spawned our interest in exploring new experiences and solutions that incorporate data visualization and sensor technology in other health and wellness areas such as fitness and diabetes. Both of which can be built on the Modwells platform.

What is one quick anecdote about your project?
One of our challenges was starting with the wide and vast medical space, understanding it and identifying opportunities that we wanted to focus on with in. Mostly due to personal experience, we narrowed down to preventative care and personal wellness as being a big opportunity area; one that we found lacked a lot of great solutions. After a couple of long days and weekends brainstorming and diving deeper into a couple of concepts while poorly slouched over my computer, a sketching table and wildly reaching around a white board, I thought what better place to start than someone’s posture? I am also a Pilates fanatic, which has taught me the importance of posture to help with chronic pain, physical distress, and general body deterioration. So, we decided to start with posture as one scenario that could be built on the Modwells platform and one that could benefit just about everyone. But it’s not just posture that can be managed through Modwells. The platform is designed to be flexible enough to help aid in many different situations and ailments, some of which we are exploring currently.

Read on for full details on this project and jury comments.

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