For those Wheelchair Tango Foxtrot moments
WTF moments: 5 stage Agile approach to buying my wheelchair (part 1)
So how do you go about buying an electric wheelchair?
A few weeks ago, I described using the Double Diamond approach to work out what kind of power chair I needed. In this blog I cover how, once I knew I need a chair, how did I work out which one?
A chair is an incredibly personal item of mobility equipment. Going out and buying the first thing you see is incredibly risky. To reduce the risk of buying the wrong thing, I adopted an Agile Mindset. Working as a Product Manager in NHS England, I apply the principles of the Government Digital Services (GDS) Design Manual every day in my work. It was predictable that I would take the same approach in my personal life!
I’m not going to cover all five stages in one blog, as there’s far too much to think about. In this blog are going to cover how I learned about different wheelchairs the emotional experience, for me and my family, of bringing a wheelchair into my life and identity. This is Discovery and Alpha in the Agile approach.
In my next blog, I will write about hiring a chair for a month as a test, taking the plunge to buy a permanent chair and many of the things I’ve learned about the accessories and practicalities, such as storage and keeping dry!
The 5 Stages of the Agile Product
The 5 stages are the phases a product or service will go through. I asked ChatGPT for a description. It said: “Discovery involves idea generation and requirement gathering. Alpha is the early development phase for internal testing, while Beta includes broader user testing. Live is the official product launch and maintenance stage, and Retired marks the end of the product’s lifecycle. These stages enable flexible and iterative product development and management.” Sounds about right to me!
So how did I apply this?
Discovery
The Double Diamond is a classic approach to discovery. Define your user need, explore your options and narrow to a solution you can test in Alpha.
Discovery means starting with the problem, not the solution.
I did a lot of thinking about what I needed. I talked to my physio, an occupational therapist and my GP. We discussed what I would use the chair for and how I would make sure I won’t use it too much, so I don’t become deconditioned.
I also talked with friends and family. My boyfriend reminded me we needed something that would cope with the kind of countries we are planning trips to, such as Morocco, Botswana or Croatia. My mum and I thought about the cruise we went on in May and how the chair would have helped. My friends helped me work out how I might get a chair in and out of a car on my own.
Alpha — internal testing
My interpretation of Alpha was to visit several showrooms and try multiple chairs. I learned a lot from trying each chair, and also from comparing their features.
One salesperson told me how I would need to check chairs could cope with hills, as I live in central Shrewsbury, which is built on a hill! Another helped me understand what type of wheels worked best on slightly slippery festival grass, or the bumpy streets of Marrakech. We tried getting different chairs into my car and different types of joystick controls.
Testing is not just practical learning, it is an emotional experience.
Involving my mum and partner at this stage helped me to help them. Everyone, including me, is grieving my changed abilities. The chair is a huge positive. It saves me energy to spend it on the important and fun stuff. However, we are grieving for fully-ambulatory Claire and the things she did — like going into a bar that has steps!
Maybe I will blog about that at some point.
What we did notice is how mobility stores can be pretty grim places. All four that I visited had at least one very dark part of the store, lit with flickering strip lights and full of practical but unattractive items in mobility-aid-chrome or NHS-beige.
These stores are few and far between and the people who use them have little choice over where to go, so it seems there is no incentive for the stores to create a more attractive shopping experience and make it look a little less like a warehouse attached to God’s waiting room.
Just because it is important to physically test equipment before buying it, doesn’t mean that these shops won’t become more aware of the competition from online retailers. PC World has learned to provide a great experience in store, so when we get home and go online we choose to buy from them. Hopefully these mobility retailers will also improve their showrooms when they are competing against online shops.
A 2020 study into Internet usage by the Office for National Statistics showed that 81% of disabled adults were recent Internet users, in comparison to 92% of the general population and Internet use for people over 75 nearly doubled to 54%. This gives reason for hope, though the cost of living crisis is disproportionately affecting disabled people. 2023 research by Opinium showed over a third of disabled people had turned off the heating, compared to around a quarter of non-disabled adults. Many more have given up their internet access.
The market for mobility aids and equipment is going to shift online. It is vitally important we get to touch, test and experience the supports we need before we buy them, so I hope the market follows the example of computer retailers, creating a more human-centred experience, whether online or in person.
