Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
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Student healthcare – students design <strong>for</strong> students<br />
The student healthcare unit of Helsinki Health Care Centre, the provider<br />
of health services to 22,000 polytechnic students, was searching <strong>for</strong> a new<br />
means to fight the rise in sexually transmitted infections. Chlamydia, which<br />
is the most common of these, does not usually present any noticeable<br />
symptoms. This calls <strong>for</strong> raising the sexual health awareness of students,<br />
especially those with high-risk behaviours. Initially, the students were<br />
briefed based on experiences with the successful application of online<br />
questionnaires to reach undiagnosed diabetics in at-risk age groups. This<br />
sparked the idea of developing a similar tool to screen <strong>for</strong> chlamydia. The<br />
designers’ task was to explore how IT could be used to enable more efficient<br />
screening of students who may be in need of chlamydia treatment. The<br />
core idea of such a service would be to get the polytechnic students more<br />
interested in their own health and make them aware that they could be<br />
carrying a potentially symptom-free chlamydia infection. The tool should<br />
attract 20-year-old students to participate in a campaign that is easily<br />
available and approachable.<br />
The design team 6 set out to identify the students who were most at risk<br />
and to understand the current ways in which the student healthcare unit<br />
reached out to them. Through field visits, interviews and observations,<br />
it became evident that the students least likely to visit a nurse were the<br />
ones most at risk. Raising awareness among these students and getting<br />
them to understand their risk would be the most effective contribution.<br />
Another important insight was that the way to screen high-risk individuals<br />
would be to approach those who have been intimate with people who<br />
have tested positive.<br />
The proposed “oireeton.fi” (symptomless.fi) (page 137) concept is an<br />
online service with related promotional elements. It reaches out to students<br />
who engage in risky behaviour and aims <strong>for</strong> easier testing and detection<br />
6 Group ”Student health”: Markus Lappalainen, Helinä Lehtonen and Riku Rantala.<br />
138 · Reducing social distance through co-design
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