Designing for wellbeing

of the positive story of people helping at crucial moments in a patient’s life
is as valuable as the perspective of agony, both the design and presentation
of Vihrea muutos do not fare well in illustrating this. It was as if the design
was trying to systematise these moments of significance, disregarding the
actual particulars of these empathic moments as they occur. In the Vihrea
muutos concept, both the elderly and the mentally ill are supposed to
take care of plants and, by extension, each other. However, it is unclear on
what stories the overall design of a public indoor green space was based
on. Although this design tries to address stigma, it is questionable why the
elderly and the mentally ill are put together. One gets the impression that
they were not put together due to stigmatic reasons, but they were “mashed
up” for the convenience of a solution that, by now, seems only remotely to
address the positive story of the empathic encounter. As if both the elderly
and the mentally ill were unutilised resources in society, for whom Vihreä
muutos has now found a new purpose, culminating in a student’s statement:
“And we can give them a new task in their life”. This was a design of bigger
stories based on an ageing population and the rising costs of healthcare,
which did not account for the smaller stories of individual lives.
The role of design in telling stories
I have stressed the significance of stories when designing for wellbeing
in psychiatric care. In particular, I have argued for a perspective with scenarios
that look beyond the designed solution. The scenario is a story of
need and, especially in the context of psychiatric care, a story of agony in
which a solution or an artefact may play a role. By giving agony a voice, the
scenario does not primarily illustrate a solution, but a problem, an issue,
a lack, and with it the need for change. From this perspective, the solution
and the technical elaboration are important only in so far as they play a
role in expressing this problem and this need for change. A scenario unifies
stories of need in a single plot or story, in which solutions, artefacts and
technical details may play the role of plot devices in getting that story across.
85 · Designing wellbeing through storytelling