Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
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In one of the student projects 3 (page 42) the story of the transfer trauma<br />
played a central role in the design. These students recognised that the way<br />
psychiatric inpatient and outpatient care is organised today holds particular<br />
consequences <strong>for</strong> the individual when they are transitioned from one<br />
part of the treatment to the other. This transition is often accompanied by<br />
disorientation of the individual in transit, possibly resulting in transfer<br />
trauma. To give individuals <strong>for</strong>ward momentum in getting to the next step<br />
in their care, this team introduced the metaphor of the “transfer ticket”,<br />
turning a referral into a gradual transition.<br />
Systematically describing stories is a step to gaining empathic grasp,<br />
but design does not stop there. The storytelling offers an understanding of<br />
the very fabric of a world, of a group, but most importantly of a person’s<br />
life. Giving this understanding shape requires a process of selecting the<br />
stories to tap into or, in design terms, a process of selecting the stories<br />
to design from. Designers have to select which stories to tell and which<br />
stories to highlight. Creating a scenario becomes a unifying endeavour,<br />
in which stories of different kinds are combined into a balanced whole.<br />
Those selected become the materials used to model a new/alternative<br />
story and the solution may get a role in it. Hence the scenario becomes a<br />
plot hypothesis in which solutions may become plot devices.<br />
Giving agony voice<br />
The students presented a set of scenarios in which different kinds of stories<br />
strike a balance and together contribute to a fuller picture of how they came<br />
to understand the pressing issues in psychiatric care. Their understanding<br />
covered the stories of those who seek the assistance of psychiatric care and<br />
those who give it. Going further, some of the presentations even critically<br />
addressed the way mental illness is regarded as a phenomenon in society at<br />
large. However, the stories that addressed those seeking assistance <strong>for</strong>med<br />
3 Tamara Amalia, Otto Schultz, Sanna Tuononen and Mike Walker<br />
80 · <strong>Designing</strong> <strong>wellbeing</strong> through storytelling