Designing for wellbeing

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