A day in the life of the Benchmark Fixperts Resident

This article was published 10 years

This week, Benchmark‘s resident Fixpert, Maya Alvarado meets with a homeless charity to discuss a making workshop, gets a team together to make Heidi a bespoke paddle for an upcoming canoeing expedition and meets Emily and her twins to discuss their needs…

06:20: I wake up and get ready for work. I have been researching twins and will meet a possible Fix Partner today. I look forward to gaining some first-hand insights into problem areas.

07:30: I arrive at Benchmark. Next Saturday Lea from Fixperts will run a children’s workshop at Chats Palace Hackney, as part of the Institute of Imagination’s ‘Festival of Imagination’. I unpack the Fixperts stand and run through the assembly of each component. Alon Meron designed the stand and it is cleverly made up of a range of skeletal box components which come together to create areas for hanging, writing, exhibiting and film screening.

10:30: I head over to the homeless charity Two Saints’ housing department for a meeting with their community inclusion team. We are planning a making event in their workshop dictated by the products their clients need. Many of the residents love making and it would be wonderful for them to learn the skills to make something new, or perhaps an item to sell. This could incorporate Benchmark’s left-over materials and perhaps even furniture elements.

13:00: Jo the Benchmark chef makes an absolutely delicious lunch of quiche and salad.

13:30: I receive an email from Heidi’s tutor Fee asking for an adapted paddle that Heidi can use in her Duke of Edinburgh Canadian Canoe expedition. This could be a really great progression from the design of the utensils handles. Straight away I head to the workshop to speak to some of the makers, Mike and Kevin, who I know have made their own canoes and paddles. They are both very keen to take Heidi out for the day and to bring a number of different ply prototypes for her to test out. Kevin has also made a U-shaped paddle handle for a friend with one arm. This might also work well for Heidi if she prefers to only use one arm when paddling. Fee explains that it is important for Heidi to keep a straight posture throughout. I am very excited to start this collaborative Fixperts project with the Benchmark team!

14:00: Emily, a mother of twins I found through the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) website, arrives at Benchmark. She used to manage the Marlborough Multiples group, where parents would get together to swap advice and often products, while their children play. Emily has brought her twins Clementine and Bramley with her today, who are now three years old. We sit in the showroom and discuss what life is like parenting twins. Emily explains that it is all about manoeuvres. “Everything that is strenuous is harder when you are at your weakest,” Emily tells me, “especially with two.”

15:30: Looking back on my notes from my talk with Emily it seems that feeding was the most difficult thing for her in the early days, as it was difficult to move one child over while sitting with the other, and very difficult to get up from sitting back with both twins on you. It requires you to use your stomach muscles at a time where mothers of twins are likely to have just had a caesarean. We also talk about the task of fitting a twin carrier to your back or front. She remembers a strain when reaching for the second twin after having strapped in the first, saying she wishes “you could almost swivel one around to place in the other child”. The third task of great difficulty was bathing. When the babies are small, they must be fully supported in the bath, so you can only bathe one at a time. This means that you would have one wrapped up close on the floor and one in the bath. As they grow, it is possible to have one in a bouncing chair and one in the bath, so carefully manoeuvring between each twin to keep them safe.

16:00: This is an interesting Fixperts research scenario, because I am learning from Emily who has had time for reflection, while still searching for a Fix Partner currently experiencing these issues, or perhaps others. I go forward with a few of Emily’s suggestions as I wait to hear back from an expecting mother of twins. The first idea is the wrap-around baby carrier. In order to simplify the steps of a scarf sling I make a paper model of a carrier with two dedicated slots for the babies to sit. One baby’s weight is distributed across the right shoulder, whilst the other’s is across the left. I imagine the use of a plastic buckle to secure the fabric in place. In order to test this design around a body and to test the manoeuvres I make a full-scale fabric model out of old upholstering scraps. The movements are easy enough, but this could well be another matter with a live baby involved – I need some babies to test this out properly!

17:00: This reminds me of an Israeli Fixperts project called ‘Baby Carrier for Dror’. Orit was born without her right hand and required a carrier that was easy to use with her left hand only. Fixperts Guy Bar-sinai, Daniel Slowes and Guy Palombo developed a really intelligent solution which incorporated a loop and hook to easily secure the carrier. This made the steps very simple, which is also necessary when loading twins in to a carrier.