La Wallace
Socio-technical device for independence and socialisation around meals
Phase 2
Type of project: Prototype
Disability concerned: Mental disability, Motor disability, Multiple disabilities, Polydisability
Topics: Nutrition, psychological well-being, interpersonal relationships
Status: Completed
The Wallace is a socio-technical ecosystem that enables people with severe disabilities to prepare a meal for themselves and invite others to a meal. The Wallace is the fruit of a truly inclusive design process, which, beyond its functions, aims to promote the autonomy and socialization of its users, as well as their integration into the socio-economic world.
The concept of the Wallace as a socio-technical ecosystem for making a meal grew out of an initial Innovation Booster project, developed using a truly inclusive approach, i.e. the proposal was born out of problematisation and ideation work carried out with people with disabilities. In this way, the Wallace proposal goes beyond being a technological response to a functional need, responding to the many concerns of people with disabilities in terms of autonomy, self-determination, socialisation and inclusion. As a result, at the start of the project the concept was still no more than the principle of a solution consisting of a technical device and an ecosystem of players designed to supply the machine. The work carried out during this phase enabled us to extend the working group to include technical, economic and culinary skills that enabled us to refine the concept. So the Wallace is now an innovative technical device, whose technical architecture based on the innovative concept of ingredient cartridges has been established,
and an ecosystem of stakeholders supporting the service chain to ensure the sustainability and viability of the solution and, above all, to adapt it to the aims of autonomy and inclusion underlying the project. This is why the project has strengthened the idea of a ‘Wallace franchise’ to preserve the philosophy that has been in place throughout the project, in which people with disabilities are the driving force behind a co-creation process with the socio-economic partners involved in the ecosystem. The franchising proposal also provides a relevant business model to address the issue of the economic viability of such a scheme.
From the outset, the decision to work through a ‘truly inclusive design’ process has proved to be extremely fruitful for all parties and for the overall project. In addition, during this phase, the project was also made up of different disciplines (mechanical engineering, service design, culinary expertise, prototyping expertise), which gave rise to a fertile dynamic of socio-technical creativity.
In terms of project management, the various constraints (very tight timeframes, spatial distance between players), in addition to the conditions linked to interdisciplinarity and a truly inclusive approach, meant that we had to go back to basics, looking for effective and therefore innovative solutions.
The innovation of the Wallace ecosystem as a franchise and a machine means that we can access different types of funding to extend the project. The development of the technical system requires significant investment and the consequent expansion of the team. An Innossuisse project will be submitted in this respect, but the Wallace’s innovation lies in its socio-technical configuration, based on Social and Solidarity Economy networks, which means that we are also considering additional funding to develop the franchise concept further and study the construction of a chain of services to ensure the sustainability of the technical system. So the systemic innovation of such a project will have to be broken down into sub-projects in order to find appropriate funding.
