Designing for wellbeing

friend without children. It is hard for those without children to understand
what the new mother is talking about or even understand the words she is
using, and this can lead to unintentional social exclusion. The intended use
of these tools is to facilitate and ease communication between new mothers
and their childless friends, and to alleviate the turmoil caused by the new
member in the social circle. By arming the childless with a substitute baby
to help them empathise with the mother and a dictionary to make sense
of the language she now talks, the tools let the mother’s friends be part
of her new life. While the student’s designs are simplistic and humorous,
they do not mock mothers or their loved ones. They approach the issue in
a light-hearted way that is immediately recognisable and understandable.
This design is not about the objects, rather the discourse they influence
and how they go about it.
The tools address the issue on a broader level and for a wider discourse
and audience, elevating the work above being simply a personal artistic
response. By simplifying the tools and designing them to be aesthetically
more generic rather than lifelike, they could help a wider audience solve
the social handicap of losing friends to their babies. The photos of the tools
being used in a real-life setting show how the subject matter of the design
transcends from tangible objects to discourse.
In her reflections the student paints a picture of a smooth process, in
contrast with the Action Painting Wagon. Her attention was more focused
on refining the aesthetics of the final presentation in order to achieve the
most effective results when facilitating and shaping discourse. In spite of
the differences between the two cases, this process also relied on realising
different trials and versions of the tools in order to find a balance between
emotionally evocative and lighter discussion prompters. This is delicate
work, as the tools need to prompt the discussion in a direction from which
it can continue freely, rather than becoming too gloomy and serious or
jokey and yielding only cheap laughs.
54 · We have always been here before: on design courting real disciplines