From Activity Board to Weekly Menu Display – A New Idea Inspired by a Care Home
Some of the best ideas don't start with a product development meeting. They start with a conversation with a customer.
At The Care Home Designer, much of what we create is shaped by the care homes we work with. We encourage our clients to tell us about the challenges they face and, where possible, we look at whether an existing product can be adapted or something completely new can be created to help.
Our new weekly menu display is a good example of exactly that.
It Started With an Activities Display
We had already developed our 7-day, 8-pocket activities display, designed to give residents a clear and attractive way of seeing the activities taking place throughout the week.
Having seen the display, one of our clients approached us with a simple question: could we create something similar for their weekly menus?
We thought it was a great idea.
Rather than starting again, we took the principles behind the existing activities display and adapted them to create a new weekly menu board specifically around the client's requirements.
More Than Just Displaying the Menu
A care home menu display obviously needs to tell residents what's available, but we wanted the finished product to do more than simply present information.
The new display uses high-quality images of familiar and recognisable foods alongside the daily menu information.
The idea is to create something that's eye-catching and easy to understand while making the food itself look appealing.
As Peter puts it:
"I was hungry by the time I'd made them and that's the whole idea: stimulate appetite and display the information."
For residents, particularly those living with dementia, familiar visual cues can also be an important part of creating an environment that's easier to understand and engage with. The same principles apply throughout the care home, from communication displays through to dementia-friendly signage for care homes, where clear visual information can help support orientation and independence.
Designed Around the Care Home
Perhaps the most important part of the story is that the original idea wasn't ours.
It came from the client.
A lot of what we do at The Care Home Designer is about listening to the people actually working within care environments and encouraging them to tell us about the things they struggle with.
Sometimes the answer is one of our existing products, such as our dementia-friendly communication displays. At other times, an existing product needs changing to work for a particular environment.
And occasionally, as happened here, a client's idea results in something new altogether.
The finished weekly menu display was very well received by the client and has now given us another product that could potentially help other care homes facing the same challenge.
Have an Idea of Your Own?
Although we offer a growing range of products specifically designed for care home and dementia environments, we're always happy to discuss different requirements.
If you've seen one of our products and thought, "That would work for us if only it did this slightly differently", we'd like to hear about it.
Your idea might simply result in a bespoke version for your own care home – or it could become the inspiration for our next new product.