1000 words

Comfort and tying your shoelaces

From research it is suggested that there are two different types of comfort, psychological and physical. "Comfort is a pleasant state of psychological and physical harmony between a human being and his or her environment" (Slater, 1985). Psychological is where you are comfortable with the surrounding mentally, you feel reassured and safe; it plays off your memories, trust and relationships. This type of comfort takes a long time to create and is studied a lot with nurse where they try to create an environment for a patient to feel comfortable. Comfort with nurses is described ‘that comfort is the overall role that nurses have to focus on and to achieve this they have to first identify patients’ perceptions of their needs’ (Orlando, 1961), it is also the process to developing a close relationship with the patient which can result in healing and growth (Hall, 1964). A study by Elizabeth Tutton (2004) outlined how nurses perceive comfort and how they create comfort for their patients, the study showed that comfort was an individual process in which every one is different, and the staff needed to find out the patients wants and wishes to fulfill them. It was found that the patients felt more comfortable when the nurses had more positive attributes such as; kindness, gentleness, goodness and friendliness. It was found that comfort was also created when the nurse knows the patient, their background, likes and dislikes and simple facts about them, as this created a sense of normality.

Physical comfort is identified where you feel comfortable from and physical product or service. This type of comfort is taken for granted as people only feel comfortable after discomfort (Farrell, 2009) and this comfort is only temporary and last a short amount of time. I understand that this comfort only last for the length of the kinetic movement such as rubbing a soft surface, once you have stopped rubbing the soft surface the comfortable sensation stops. Physical comfort is integrated in industrial design with projects such as creating a chair that is comfortable, rather than an uncomfortable chair. “There are at least three design issues that need consideration in striving for comfort; Firstly, the exact cause of discomfort or comfort is unknown; there is no model available that describes the cause of comfort. Secondly, every individual has his or her own meaning of comfort, as it is a subjective phenomenon. Thridly, the comfort design process is not described and the approach is unknown" (Vink, 2005).

When considering comfort, Looze et al. (2003) described that there were three manifestations for considering: "Discomfort: the participant experiences discomfort because of physical disturbances in the environment. No discomfort: the participant is not aware of discomfort or comfort or there is no discomfort. Comfort: the participant experiences noticeably more comfort than expected and feels comfortable."  Looze et al, (2003:p 990) .The model explains the different factors that interact on resulting the design of the object, creating different manifestations; it described that you not only had to feel physically comfortable but other factors acted influence this, such as temperature, humidity, noise, state of the person, history and smell. "The history of our comfort experiences determines our expectations of a product based on what we are used to" (Looze et al. 2003: p991) this links to the physiological aspects of comfort and person memories. A study by Zhang et al. (1996) found that the absence of discomfort did not result in comfort. It showed that discomfort was associated with pain and if that was taken away then nothing was experienced, while comfort is related to the sense of well being and the pleasure the chair gives; discomfort highlights more physical aspects, such as pain, ache, hurting while comfort shows more of the mental aspects such as feeling happy, relaxed, safe, calm and restful. 

My interpretation with regard to these two different two types of comfort is the concept of time; as it takes a long time to create a safe, relaxed, comfortable environment to generate the sensation of mental comfort. Where as, physical comfort only lasts a few seconds, and when you stop moving, smelling  or listening to the experience of physical comfort, you then lose the focus on comfort and will then only consider comfort again when the action or product is deemed uncomfortable. The factor of time then becomes a big issue of making the experiment, as you have to allow for time to create both mental and physical comfort. 

A theory was devised; it was important to have two parts of the experience. As humans, we take the physical aspects of comfort for granted and because of this it is not practical to create physical comfort only to try to prevent physical discomfort. Preventing physical discomfort will act as a catalyst to creating physiological comfort. Making a comfortable environment using memories, safety, relaxation and positive attributes will create physiological comfort.

I wanted to make an experience to represent the actions of putting on and tying your shoes in a comfortable way. I feel that comfort is simple but meaningful, it’s a feel that you don't want to over power as then I feel it loses its meaning, so I wanted an experience that doesn’t have too many gadgets.

Initially I created an environment to prevent physical discomfort by using soft fabrics and textures such as fur, satin and having soft padding in the shoe. I enlarged the action of tying your shoes to emphasize what is being done; I still wanted to keep it in the feet region. I feel that is a main part of the act of putting on your shoes is the bending down so there is that connection will use your whole body.  I wanted this part of my experience to show a large amount of comfort, as I feel I there is more of a physical comfort rather then a mental comfort to tying up your shoes (and mostly touch) In making this I used soft materials, two soft pieces of padding were sewn together that can be laced up, this covered the whole leg making the experience more enlarged. These soft materials prevented an uncomfortable experience physically and also manipulated the actions on tying up your shoes. Also lined the bottom with a soft fur fabric to create physical comfort and it also created a warm environment inside that helped to make it more psychologically comfortable.

To create physiological comfort I will look at smell, the visual look of the experience and the way I act when presenting it. Vink (2005) reported that even though we are mostly not aware of the effect that smell has on us with comfort it actually influences our experiences. Therefore smell can trigger past memories and if the memory is comforting it can stimulate the feeling. Personally the smell of lavender is comforting so I used the aroma on the object to help stimulate the physiological sense of comfort. Another physiological comfort factor is the visual look of the object; this plays on the idea on memory and history with other objects. I felt an object looks comfortable with the shapes the form creates, soft, fluid, rounded shapes and also the colours used. As I was trying to keep the model simple and not over powering I made the whole model pure white and used soft fluid fabrics to make it so it looks comfortable before sitting on it and using it. Nurses fundamentally use comfort as part of their professional work, I wanted to try and use their type of personality of make the experience more mentally comfortable being; friendly, gentle and kind. Time is also an important factor of comfort, for this the experiment was kept short and simple as I felt that the user would start loosing the comfortable feeling if it kept going for too long, so it only lasted about two minutes.

Hall L.E. (1964) Nursing – What is it? The Canadian Nurse 60, 150– 155.

James J Farrell. (2009). Comfort. The Clergy Journal, 85(3), 46.

Looze, M.P. de, Kuijt-evers, L.F.M and Dieen, J.H. van (2003), sitting comfort and discomfort and the relationships with objective measures. Ergonomics, 46:985-997

Orlando I. (1961) The Dynamic Nurse–Patient Relationship: Function, Process and Principles. G P Putnam’s Sons, New York.

Slater, K. (1985) Human Comfort, Springfield IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Tutton, E., & Seers, K. (2004). Comfort on a ward for older people. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 46(4), 380-389. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2648.2004.03005.x

Vink, P. (2005). Comfort and design: Principles and good practice. Boca Raton: CRC Press.

Zhang, L. Halander, M.G. Drury, C.G. (1996). Identifying factors of comfort and discomfort in sitting. Human Factors, 38(3): 377-389