Hair loss
Hair symbolizes an important role in the social, cultural, and political relations of individuals with society. Hair is one of the most defining characteristics of a woman’s mind with feelings of attractiveness, femininity, and sexuality attached to it. Research findings reveal that loss of hair adversely affects women’s emotional health and grade of life.
Many studies address issues about the negative impacts of hair loss on self image and body image, influencing quality of life, sexuality, psychological well-being, employment, social functioning, and self-esteem.
A huge amount of literature indicates that it is one of the most dreaded and distressing side effects of chemotherapy. For some women, the thought of losing hair is considered to be even more challenging than losing a breast due to cancer because it makes the disease real to them and visible to the outside world, violating their privacy. Edition that cannot be avoided or remedied immediately. Headwear becomes an essential part of everyday dress for most women with chemotherapy-induced hair loss. While a whole body of literature studies various stages of chemotherapy-induced hair loss women, one study could be found that considered the needs associated with head coverings for them.
Therefore, the purpose of a current study can be stated with the aim that headwear based on this understanding may be a helpful tool to enrich their quality of life. Headwear-related needs are those needs associated with functional, structural, aesthetic, and expressive features of the headwear design in terms of fit, shape, comfort, visual appeal, and colors. The five-step design process developed by Watkins and Dunne was used as a basis for the study and informed the development of the headwear.
Design Process
Buchanan describes design as the ability of human beings to envision, plan, and create products that benefit human beings. Aspelund describes the design as a plan of action in response to a problem or circumstance in need of a solution. It’s about ideating, exploring, planning, and making choices that lead to a consumable product. Accordingly, design is not only a product but a process that includes preparation, incubation, illumination, and evaluation. According to Watkins and Dunne, design is a logical problem-solving process where designers continuously engage in alternating forms of thinking such as analysis and synthesis or rational and imaginative thinking.
They summarised the critical steps involved in design in a five-stage design process, adapting terms from Koberg and Bagnall. The first research stage is a discovery stage through which designers explore and gain comprehensive knowledge about the problem under scrutiny and understand what the users require by collecting facts and opinions. The user’s description, demographics, and psychographics are established before the needs analysis.
Headwear-related needs are those needs associated with functional, structural, aesthetic, and expressive features of the headwear design in terms of fit, shape, comfort, visual appeal, colors. This stage involves the use of various research methods and data collection tools such as direct, indirect, and participatory observations, interviews, questionnaires, or experiments. The research stage can take the greatest amount of time and effort but is fundamental in accurately defining the research problem and finding effective solutions.
The last evaluation step of the design process assesses to what extent the final design satisfies the criteria identified in the definition stage and how well the set goals are accomplished by the final design. Appraisal of apparel most often involves using interviews, questionnaires, and wearer and field testing methodologies. The insight drawn from evaluations might be used in further improving the product. Characteristic of the design process is that the designer can always step back to previous steps, and improvise when needed.
Hair has significant importance for women
Human hair protects as well as aesthetically satisfies both individuals. Hair also performs the thermal insulation role around the head as a shield that guards the head against other adverse environmental elements that cause sunburn, radiation, and mechanical abrasion. Hair, however, plays a crucial role in communication. Hair has been an icon of culture, social status, politics, and religion in people’s lives, representing maturity, age, gender, social class, beauty, religious faith, occupation, intelligence, etc.
The self-concept and self-identity messages may also be portrayed through hair. The symbolic meaning of hair is that heads are shaved as an institutionalized mechanism for diminishing the sense of the self, for discounting individuality and worldly vanity, and as a sign of repentance. In modern society, hair loss is, above all, a symbol and a reminder of cancer. Freedman researched symbolic cultural meanings of hair and hair loss as an expression of deeper cultural values.
Hair as the first method of expression of self-identity holds strong social significance, thus many women suffering from hair loss are unable to appreciate the fact that chemotherapy can save their life but regard it as the worst event that can happen to a woman, sometimes even more awful than the removal of a breast. It was established that hair loss changes the self-concept in women. It was found that the lack of privacy made another condition hard as the disease became noticeable to other people. The last step in the design process is evaluation.
Evaluation helps determine how well the product meets the design criteria and addresses user needs. It can identify areas that do not meet the set criteria and need further exploration and improvement. Potential users are in the best position to evaluate the products. Eleven women in a local cancer support group evaluated the headwear designs. Two of them were interviewed earlier.
The headwear prototypes were given to the evaluators and an explanation of the hair design criteria, where they were allowed to feel the material, turn the inside out, to change the accessory on the beanie and that of the professional hat. The scarf can be unzipped from the inner lining to be dissected individually. The evaluators were told that the prototypes were made to fit a specific head form, so may not fit everybody; however, they were free to try on the items. Only two of the evaluators tried on the prototypes, which were small for them.
CONCLUSION
A user-centered design action was used in this study to create headwear prototypes for women experiencing chemotherapy-induced hair loss. The design process ends with the growth and evaluation of prototypes and does not focus on further steps of product development. However, a future direction for making this product available to users could focus on collaborating with potential manufacturers or establishing a small non-profit production that would provide assistance and support to cancer patients.
Another strategy to get the product to market is to use a crowdfunding platform. Organizations such as the American Cancer Society or Susan G. Komen could be contacted for collaboration on the headwear production and distribution, perhaps through the ACS’s catalog or related websites. For women who are undergoing chemotherapy and are losing their hair, appropriate headwear may be an important way of managing this side effect. Strategies to effectively cope with and control treatment side effects could improve patients’ quality of life, daily functioning as well as treatment adherence.