for those Wheelchair Tango Foxtrot moments in life

WTF moments: using the Double Diamond to find the right power chair

Pretty much the most exciting thing in my life since Netflix announced season 2 of Wheel of Time has been finding myself an electric wheelchair. There have been so many pitfalls and things to consider, that I thought it would help others in my situation if I wrote some blogs about how I went about finding the right one for me.

In this first blog, I cover how I worked out what I needed. In my next blog, part 1 of using the 5 Agile approach to choosing a wheelchair, I talk about my early learnings, including how it emotionally affected me and my family.

In a future blog, I’ll cover how I hired a test chair, what I learned about all the things you need with a chair and the one I eventually bought.

I worked all of this out consulting with several experts, including mobility aid suppliers and my physiotherapist. I’m not giving medical advice, just sharing my experiences.

So what is a power chair?

A power chair, or electric wheelchair, is a wheelchair powered with a motor, rather than pushed. Like push wheelchairs, there are different types and some can be propelled by an ‘attendant’ — i.e. not the person in the chair. As I have control of my hand and my faculties, I have one I drive myself.

Some fold, some come apart and some have amazing features like raising you to standing position or lying you flat. Every chair user has unique circumstances and their chair needs to reflect this.

A person crossing a plaza in an electric wheelchair. Photo by Red John on Unsplash

The search: which power chair is right for me?

As a product manager who works in an Agile way, I took an Agile approach to finding the right chair.

I started with my discovery phase, following the double diamond design process first taught to me by the amazing Tero Väänänen at NHS England (for more on this see this interesting Design Council article on the double diamond design approach).

The Double Diamond design methodology © Ian Batterbee 2022

Challenge

The double diamond starts with a challenge. In my case, it was this: I need to reduce the amount of energy I expend, while regaining my social life and enabling me to travel for work and pleasure once more.

Discovery

Discovery is where you find out more about the problem — the circumstances in which it occurs, the user’s situation and preferences. If I were doing this for a large-scale digital application I would create at least one user persona, a pen picture of a representative user that helps me understand their personality, likes and dislikes and the circumstances.

The main problem was my energy levels, as explained in my blog just walk up the stairs.

When I do anything that uses too much energy, such as walking to a nearby bar and spending the evening with friends, I experience severe fibromyalgia symptoms that can last several days, depending how much I exerted and how much rest I got before and after. For example, to go to dinner and then dance 3 slow dances during an evening on holiday, I had to lie down for 3 hours beforehand. Even then, I had symptoms afterwards.

Dressed for Formal Night on Ventura © Claire Dellar 2023

Define

Defining the problem helped me refine my user story.

AS A: person who wants an active work and social life but has an energy-limiting condition

I NEED TO: reduce my energy expenditure on the things that I am not invested in

IN ORDER TO: have enough energy to do the things I care about.

Presenting at the Association for Project Management conference February 2020. © Claire Dellar 2020

I also defined the acceptance criteria for any solution:

1. I live and travel alone, so I must be able to manage the solution on my own.
2. I am currently challenging my lower-rate mobility independence payment, so I don’t have an accessible car or funding to adapt mine
3. I live in a top floor flat in a listed building and have 9 steps between the street and the elevator, so any solution must be practical
4. I want an active work and social life; the solution must enable me to get around an office, travel abroad and do things with my friends, including going places that aren’t flat or tarmacked.
5. I live in the centre of town and the whole place is built on steep hills; the solution must be safe and sufficient to allow me to access the town centre for a whole day.

Develop

Develop is where you look at all the potential solutions that meet the user need and acceptance criteria and are within cost, time and risk parameters.

My physio and I quickly ruled out anything that involved walking with some kind of support, as things like crutches wouldn’t reduce energy use enough, while hurting my hands and arms.

The potential solutions boiled down to several types of wheelchair:

• self-propelled wheelchairs
• light-weight electric wheelchairs that come to pieces
• mobility scooters
• medium-weight electric wheelchairs that fold

There is no way I could push myself in a wheelchair — I’m supposed to be using less energy than before, not more.

I live in a very hilly town (I actually had to rule out a lot of chairs that would not be safe on the 9% gradients I live with) so the light-weight chairs were just not powerful enough. I also didn’t want to have to reassemble the chair every time I used it.

The mobility scooters I looked at with the experts are safer on gradients, and have strong motors. They’re also humungous. I want to get around shops and the office and I don’t want to be worrying about being separated from my chair if I go into a restaurant or small shop. I also can’t get one into my vehicle, so that ruled them out.

A few of the folding chairs have the power to deal with the hills, the maneuverability to get around an office or shop and I found a way to get them into my car.

Of course, as a trade off I can’t get into inaccessible shops and restaurants — and the historic town I live in has a lot of those. I carry a bike lock so, if necessary, I can chain it up outside.

I also have a load of amazing friends, who have carried my chair into pubs, up steps and even remember to call venues to check accessibility before they book anything, so I am not excluded from our group outings.

Claire in her chair a cafe © Claire Dellar 2023

Deliver

In true Agile style, I didn’t just dive in and buy a chair, however. I alpha and beta tested — ran a pilot — and I’ll talk about how incredibly valuable that was, what I learned and which chair I ended up with in a future blog.

Next: Using the 5 stage Agile approach to choose my wheelchair (part 1)