One of the key motivations behind bespoken’s creation was to bridge the gap between designers and end users to work together and support one another to improve independent living. We’re delighted to do just that today and bring you an exciting story and upcoming project.

Well known for its drive and support for innovation, Blackwood Homes and Care is currently working in partnership with the exciting start up company Freedom One Life and Alex Papanikolaou to do an exciting user test trial of a new generation of wheelchairs. This week saw stage one take shape as Blackwood customers and wheelchair users gathered for an intro, demo and Q&A session in Edinburgh…

Alex is an award winning entrepreneur who has used a powered wheelchair all his life. Frustrated by unreliable mechanisms and difficult to replace parts, Alex (a keen traveller) decided to create a more robust and reliable powered wheelchair that could handle rough terrain all the while being usable indoors as well. And we’re not kidding either, Alex has just returned from a holiday where his chair happily roamed the Namibian desert!

You can read our interview from earlier this year with Alex and more details on the chair here.

Back to our demo day, Alex was joined by Isla his PA and Freedom One Life’s Managing Director Albert Nicholl. The main purpose of the day was to lay out the user test trial that Freedom One Life is currently recruiting volunteers for and to gauge interest among Blackwood’s customer base.

Speaking to bespoken after the event, a spokesperson for Freedom One Life said “Blackwood are a fantastic organisation running an invaluable service which is why we've chosen them to user trial our power wheelchair prototype. We really enjoyed meeting the staff and the residents and are looking forward to working with them on this project, and many more in the future.”

One Blackwood tenant who was there, Mark, has already expressed a strong interest in taking part in the trial. I spent much of the afternoon in conversation with Mark, hearing about the problems he has had getting about in his regular powered chair. He’s keen to experience this (the 4^th prototype from Freedom One Life) to find out if it can address a lot of the difficulties he has experienced with breakdowns and bad terrain.

And this, ultimately, is what it’s all about. The Freedom One Life team will of course prepare the chair for optimum user experience but the users will then be able to provide invaluable feedback on all the other aspects that make a successful product.

There was a lot of interest following the demo and several people asked important questions concerning the chair’s compatibility with their lifestyle and habits. One in particular raised an important issue about the chair’s compatibility with a car hoist for loading and unloading it, something Freedom One Life’s engineers will have to now look at before the start of the trial.

The trial is set to begin in late April so keep watching bespoken for latest news on this one…

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