Just had a brilliant conversation with second year design ethnography students about the hospital bed / coffin design.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/27/colombia-coronavirus-cardboard-hospital-beds-coffins

Who wants to hear what they thought of it?

Okay. Here we go! Questions and concerns from my notes:

1. First we need to acknowledge the different experiences of COVID in South America and in NZ. We have no idea what it’s like to see the dead stacked in the streets.

2. Also a need to respect that different cultures and religions have different understandings of healing and death.

3. Note the designers were not asked to design anything and there was no immediate need for it. But their intentions were probably good and the Dr in the article saw potential value if things got worse. It’s good to be practical, especially when things are very bad.

4. The problem is the combination of the bed and coffin. Why not design each? Why make the hospital constantly have to replace both products when only one is single use? Unsustainable even with cardboard.

5. Why offer the hospital or the government the ability to under-serve or under-fund hospitals in need? What they need is real beds that will last. Better equipment. Better infrastructure.

6. Why let a patient know that by putting them in this bed you’ve already assumed they’re going to die? That might make some people quit living.

And last, but not least:

7. Why didn’t the designers just figure out a way to keep better track of bodies going into mass graves? Why didn’t the designers find a way to memorialise these people?

I thought they had some solid insights here, don't you?

I just kept thinking of when the Inuit asked the Canadian government for help during the H1N1 outbreak and they sent body bags. Imagine how this design could be mis-used. Ug.