Ode

Today, a staggering 850,000 people in the UK live with dementia. That number is expected to rise to 1.6 million by 2040. Despite the care they receive, 33% of older adults still succumb to malnutrition. Through innovative design, we saw an opportunity to make a difference. With the help of a fragrance specialist, we set our sights on stopping nutritional decline for people with dementia.

In 2012, the Design Council and the Department for Health came to a realisation: if they could connect the right kind of agency with the right people and resources to tackle the problem, they could foster an environment for purposeful design. They were right. To turn their vision into reality, the Design Council launched the Living Well with Dementia Design Challenge - a 20-week program that would call on specialist agencies to propose innovative solutions. Having built a reputation for inclusive, user-centric design, we were chosen as one of five agencies to address the growing health crisis.

The result was Ode. A ground-breaking fragrance-release system, Ode releases three natural aromas of food to coincide with mealtimes. Designed to work in homes and hospitals, we built Ode to maintain the independence and nutrition wellbeing of people living with dementia. From prototype development to testing, refining and tweaking, we proudly span out our start-up and created an award winning product proven to help stimulate an appetite in older adults living with Dementia.