In this guest post by Liz Anieto, Founder of Svelte, continence product performance should look beyond specifications, with real-world trials assessing fit, comfort, movement, breathability and ease of changing to better understand the wearer experience.
We ask a lot of continence products. They may be worn for hours at a time, while someone sleeps, walks, sits, exercises or goes about their normal routine, yet much of the way we compare them comes down to things that can be put on a specification sheet.
Absorbency, sizing and cost are important, but they cannot tell us how a product feels after several hours of wear, whether it shifts when someone moves, feels hot or restrictive, is easy to pull up and down or leaves the wearer conscious of it throughout their day. Those things only really become apparent when the product moves from the packet to the person.
For aged care providers, that wearer experience can provide another useful measure of product performance. Looking at fit, movement, breathability and comfort alongside the usual specifications can reveal things about how a product works in everyday life that are difficult to assess on paper.
Treat fit as a functional issue
A product that is too loose may leak, while one that is too tight may restrict movement, leave marks or be difficult to change. But sizing alone can only tell us part of the story. Body shape, posture and movement can all affect how a garment fits and feels once it is being worn.
Having spent a great deal of time looking closely at continence products, one thing I have come to appreciate is how much a specification sheet cannot tell us about the experience of actually wearing one. The waistband and leg openings may appear to fit well, for example, but it is only through movement that we see whether the garment stays in place when someone sits, stands and walks.
The same applies to dressing and changing. How easily a garment can be pulled up and down, how it moves with the body and how discreet it feels under clothing are all part of the wearer experience, but can be difficult to judge until the product is in use.
Pay attention to heat and the skin microclimate
Continence garments are worn close to the body, sometimes for extended periods. Heat and moisture can build up, particularly in warmer weather or for people who spend long periods sitting.
Absorbency is only one part of how a continence garment performs. Breathability, softness, moisture management and the person’s experience of heat or restriction can provide a fuller picture of comfort.
These characteristics can look quite different on paper than they feel in practice. A product may meet expectations for absorbency, but that does not necessarily tell us whether it feels hot after several hours, whether the materials feel soft against the skin or whether the garment becomes more noticeable or restrictive as the day goes on.
The experience behind product performance
Continence products are ultimately worn by people, and their experience can reveal aspects of performance that are difficult to capture through technical measures alone. Comfort is one example, but so are movement, ease of dressing and changing, discretion and how conscious someone is of the garment while going about their day.
This is particularly relevant because some differences between products may seem relatively small when viewed as individual features. The waistband, leg construction, materials and overall fit all interact once the garment is being worn, and together they can create quite different experiences.
That is why wearer experience can add useful context to specifications. It helps move the assessment of a product beyond whether it performs its basic function to how it feels and behaves over several hours of everyday wear.
Looking beyond the specification sheet in product trials
Procurement decisions understandably consider price, supply reliability and ease of staff training. Absorbency, sizing and other product specifications are also important parts of that comparison, but trials can add another layer of information that may be difficult to obtain on paper.
Seeing a product used in everyday conditions can provide insight into fit, movement, breathability, ease of changing and comfort over time. It can also reveal whether the experience of wearing the product matches what might have been expected from its specifications.
For a wearable product, this real-world experience can help fill the gap between what a product says it will do and how it really performs.
Product trials are an opportunity to understand what happens when the product moves from the packet to the person.
A specification sheet can tell us a great deal about what a continence product is designed to do. What it cannot fully capture is what that product is like to wear.
For something that may be worn for hours at a time, understanding both sides of that equation can provide a much fuller picture of product performance.
