April: a month of showcasing

April was all about connections and creating opportunities to show OnCue to people, raise awareness, and gather feedback.

OnCue was presented at the Medical Delta Conference in Delft, and at Milan Design Week to an international audience.

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That meant preparing flyers and business cards, designing the exhibition setup, adjusting the prototype for different interactions, booking a flight back to Italy from the Netherlands, and packing a suitcase as full as my excitement to tell people about OnCue.

I had two goals in Milan: to talk about inclusive design and to find someone willing to support the next steps of the prototype.

It was an intense and beautiful week. During Milan Design Week, the whole city seems to be touched by a special kind of magic: people from all over the world come together in one place, united from the same passion: a love for design.

By the end of each day, I had almost lost my voice. Even so, raising a bit of awareness and sharing the project felt worth it.

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Talking about what you are working on lets you see people’s immediate reactions, sometimes more clearly in their eyes than in their words. I received encouragement from people who had family members with Parkinson’s. One young man told me about his grandfather, who had always loved writing, and thanked me for what I was doing. Others promised to connect me with people they knew, or simply stopped to offer kind words and encouragement.

I knew how important this was, who I was doing it for, and that I would not give up easily. Every person who walked past me had to know about it. I wanted to stop them, tell them everything, and hope that maybe they would be the person who could connect me with someone who might help me continue developing this product.

Milan Design Week also happened to coincide with World Parkinson’s Day, which felt like a meaningful coincidence.

From a financial point of view, however, nothing concrete came out of it. No mysterious benefactor appeared to tell me that their wallet was far too full and that they were looking for a project to fund. But what did grow was my determination not to give up, and the feeling that sooner or later I would find a way forward.

Thank you for reading.

Alessandra