Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
Designing for wellbeing
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In their scenario they struck a balance between the bigger story of the<br />
revolving door, which affects many individuals, and a smaller story of<br />
frozen pizza as one of the consequential and significant realities they came<br />
to understand. A small but powerful story like this affects the process of<br />
design significantly and, with it, the voice of agony found its way into the<br />
presentation through the single quote: “He ate the frozen pizza – raw”. If<br />
we were to understand the design process as guided by this pain (eating<br />
the frozen pizza – raw), all elements in the design (communal kitchens),<br />
the scenario (cooking together/eating together), the artefact (secondary<br />
in this example), including the technical descriptions (branded premises<br />
across the country), could also be understood to contribute to this primarily<br />
– voicing that pain. Agony can <strong>for</strong>m a valuable perspective and an overall<br />
theme that can guide the design process in the context of psychiatric care.<br />
For example, we could ask the following questions: How well does the<br />
design articulate and convey this agony? How do the different elements of<br />
design, the presentation, the scenario, the artefact and the technicalities<br />
contribute to voicing this pain? In respect to the smaller stories, these<br />
questions could even be considered pressing because if the design does<br />
not answer this call, the opportunity of giving agony a voice could be lost.<br />
An example where this voice had to compete with technicalities was<br />
with the design of Vihreä muutos (Green Change, in Finnish, page 82). The<br />
students identified empathic people as significant <strong>for</strong> the rehabilitation<br />
process. They learnt this through a story from one individual who they<br />
spoke to about their experience of rehabilitation. One of the students<br />
says: “Empathic people can be a turning point in a healing process”. The<br />
final design is a public indoor green space, that intends to bring together<br />
elderly people and people in need of psychiatric care, with the hope that<br />
both groups are passionate about caring <strong>for</strong> plants and can connect with<br />
one another because of that.<br />
Instead of agony, this group decided to voice a positive story in their<br />
design: the encounters with empathic people. And although the perspective<br />
84 · <strong>Designing</strong> <strong>wellbeing</strong> through storytelling