A while back I wrote about a set of china from the Design for Dementia project, made to maximize independent eating for older users whose hand coordination is declining.

In this beautiful set of sculptural cutlery, Mickael Boulay provides an on-ramp for people developing motor skills for the first time—especially when those skills are already hampered by low muscle tone or coordination.

four shiny metal eating implements in a row—moving from a blunt, unformed shapes for pushing food, to the sharper precision of the familiar knife. same four-part progression, this time with a spoon a close up of a hand using a proto-fork—a wider base for grasping, and two prongs at the end for spearing food. another close up of a proto-spoon in use, with a wider, curved structure all the way through, for easy scooping

Or perhaps these would work at both ends of the life cycle, and for therapeutic skill-building times in between as well. "Transitions" morphs the knife, fork, and spoon from blunter objects that push food around to the refined spearing and scooping models of these familiar objects.

The video walks you through the design process with end users and an occupational therapist collaborator:

[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/45060647 w=500&h=275]

Transitions : the story (Updated version) from mickael boulay on Vimeo.

via The MEME.