Dv
D. van Dortmont
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Lowering the Bar
A Salutogenic Design Approach to Healthy Ageing and the Promises We Keep
Preventive behaviour is one of the few levers available for extending the years people spend in good health, and women over 55 sit at the point where it matters most. Bone density and muscle loss begin to decide how long independence lasts, and menopause entered Dutch health policy only in 2025. Yet almost every product aimed at that gap measures: it sets a target and judges performance daily. This thesis asks how a wearable product-service system can help a woman act on a preventive behaviour she has chosen for herself, without measuring her body. It was developed with Silvie Health, a startup working on women's health after 55, through a mixed-methods design process guided by a salutogenic lens, which asks what generates health rather than what is wrong.
The project began from supplement adherence. Desk research across eight sub-questions, nine interviews with women aged 55 to 75 and five expert interviews found that the premise did not hold. Most participants already had a supplementation routine that worked, anchored to an existing daily moment. What they described instead was doubt about whether what they did was right for them, and a gap between deciding on a healthy behaviour and getting round to it. The effect of most supplements cannot be felt, so more information does not settle that doubt. A first concept, a bedside clock, was built and tested; participants rejected it in a single session, and the problem was restated around the distance between knowing and doing.
The result is the Silvie Pillar. The wearer writes one promise to herself in a companion app, a gold-coated titanium pendant vibrates once on her breastbone at a moment inside a window she chose, and a squeeze, read capacitively through the pendant, confirms she kept it. There is no score and no biometric sensor, and any jeweller can replace the cell from a printed service sheet. Six evaluation sessions, correspondence with thirteen suppliers and a jeweller, a finite element analysis of the sensing wall and a modelled cost case were used to test desirability, feasibility and viability, each reported with what it does not yet prove. By showing that a preventive health wearable can measure nothing about the body and still be wanted by the women who handled it, the project offers a counter-example to a wearable culture built on measurement and self-optimisation. ...
The project began from supplement adherence. Desk research across eight sub-questions, nine interviews with women aged 55 to 75 and five expert interviews found that the premise did not hold. Most participants already had a supplementation routine that worked, anchored to an existing daily moment. What they described instead was doubt about whether what they did was right for them, and a gap between deciding on a healthy behaviour and getting round to it. The effect of most supplements cannot be felt, so more information does not settle that doubt. A first concept, a bedside clock, was built and tested; participants rejected it in a single session, and the problem was restated around the distance between knowing and doing.
The result is the Silvie Pillar. The wearer writes one promise to herself in a companion app, a gold-coated titanium pendant vibrates once on her breastbone at a moment inside a window she chose, and a squeeze, read capacitively through the pendant, confirms she kept it. There is no score and no biometric sensor, and any jeweller can replace the cell from a printed service sheet. Six evaluation sessions, correspondence with thirteen suppliers and a jeweller, a finite element analysis of the sensing wall and a modelled cost case were used to test desirability, feasibility and viability, each reported with what it does not yet prove. By showing that a preventive health wearable can measure nothing about the body and still be wanted by the women who handled it, the project offers a counter-example to a wearable culture built on measurement and self-optimisation. ...
Preventive behaviour is one of the few levers available for extending the years people spend in good health, and women over 55 sit at the point where it matters most. Bone density and muscle loss begin to decide how long independence lasts, and menopause entered Dutch health policy only in 2025. Yet almost every product aimed at that gap measures: it sets a target and judges performance daily. This thesis asks how a wearable product-service system can help a woman act on a preventive behaviour she has chosen for herself, without measuring her body. It was developed with Silvie Health, a startup working on women's health after 55, through a mixed-methods design process guided by a salutogenic lens, which asks what generates health rather than what is wrong.
The project began from supplement adherence. Desk research across eight sub-questions, nine interviews with women aged 55 to 75 and five expert interviews found that the premise did not hold. Most participants already had a supplementation routine that worked, anchored to an existing daily moment. What they described instead was doubt about whether what they did was right for them, and a gap between deciding on a healthy behaviour and getting round to it. The effect of most supplements cannot be felt, so more information does not settle that doubt. A first concept, a bedside clock, was built and tested; participants rejected it in a single session, and the problem was restated around the distance between knowing and doing.
The result is the Silvie Pillar. The wearer writes one promise to herself in a companion app, a gold-coated titanium pendant vibrates once on her breastbone at a moment inside a window she chose, and a squeeze, read capacitively through the pendant, confirms she kept it. There is no score and no biometric sensor, and any jeweller can replace the cell from a printed service sheet. Six evaluation sessions, correspondence with thirteen suppliers and a jeweller, a finite element analysis of the sensing wall and a modelled cost case were used to test desirability, feasibility and viability, each reported with what it does not yet prove. By showing that a preventive health wearable can measure nothing about the body and still be wanted by the women who handled it, the project offers a counter-example to a wearable culture built on measurement and self-optimisation.
The project began from supplement adherence. Desk research across eight sub-questions, nine interviews with women aged 55 to 75 and five expert interviews found that the premise did not hold. Most participants already had a supplementation routine that worked, anchored to an existing daily moment. What they described instead was doubt about whether what they did was right for them, and a gap between deciding on a healthy behaviour and getting round to it. The effect of most supplements cannot be felt, so more information does not settle that doubt. A first concept, a bedside clock, was built and tested; participants rejected it in a single session, and the problem was restated around the distance between knowing and doing.
The result is the Silvie Pillar. The wearer writes one promise to herself in a companion app, a gold-coated titanium pendant vibrates once on her breastbone at a moment inside a window she chose, and a squeeze, read capacitively through the pendant, confirms she kept it. There is no score and no biometric sensor, and any jeweller can replace the cell from a printed service sheet. Six evaluation sessions, correspondence with thirteen suppliers and a jeweller, a finite element analysis of the sensing wall and a modelled cost case were used to test desirability, feasibility and viability, each reported with what it does not yet prove. By showing that a preventive health wearable can measure nothing about the body and still be wanted by the women who handled it, the project offers a counter-example to a wearable culture built on measurement and self-optimisation.