Designing for wellbeing

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