MIND.ME
Title: MIND.ME
For: ITU student project and Dansk blindesamfund
Brief: Within the theme “transitions”, design a digital service or product that can create value for a delimited user group and an external stakeholder.
Research methods: Interviews, expert engagement, observations, empathy building, design research and desk research.
Design tools: Co-design, storyboards, sketching, design manifest, personas, wireframing, low-fi prototyping, Figma, Houde & Hill’s composition model.
Timeframe: September – December 2018
The problem
The transition to becoming highly visually impaired is commonly associated with difficult emotions. It is described by professionals as a “mental crisis”, which may be associated with depression, depression, and social isolation. We chose to work with the transition of loosing sight, as the situation is so life changing and devasting for the people experincing the transition, yet in our research we found that the emotional aspect was overlooked in current services and products.
The design concept
Through our design we sought to address one of the emotional aspects of the transition: The tendency to isolate itself socially. We developed an application that seeks to help the user overcome some of the mental barriers which the user group experiences.
The design is directed towards adults to whom their visually-impairment is new and may be in risk of isolating themselves. The app contains audio guides that prepares the user on how to take on a social event, but within different categories of events (sports, party, dating etc.).
The audio guides are meant to help the user by expressing feelings that can be difficult to cope with and that one can feel left alone with. Furthermore, the audio guides provides the user with mental and practical techniques to deal with negative mental barriers that hinders their desire for social activities. As we are within the field of affective design, we have tried to create a design that can facilitate specific feelings of security and trust – emotions that are important for the content to become credible and for the user to want to address his feelings through our design. This ment careful word selection along with special focus on sound, timing and tonality of the speaker.
The process
Due to the seriousness of the transition and to the many nuances involved, we spent a large part of the project in the research phase. To design something that could help the target group we had to try and grasp what it is like loosing sight unexpected as an adult. Therefore our approach and choice of methods were highly empathic. First we desk researched as much as possible , so that we were prepared and so that we could handle interviews with users best possibly. We also interviewed stakeholders around the target group such as psychologists, The Institute for the Blind and Partially Sighted and Dansk blindesamfund. We also tried walking and undertaking activities ourselves wearing glasses that blurred ours sights and with a cane to get a feeling, which led to a a practical understanding of the transition as well as deeper personal reflections. It helped us in building an understanding that we used in our interviews with users. In the beginning our approach highly divergent, but quickly in our research phase the design opening of designing to help users overcome the emotional difficulties in the transition presented itself. We chose to work with this opening, as we found it was overlooked and highly important to the users.
In exploring the design space we brainstormed, brainwalked and sketched. Because the subject we worked with was so individual and still difficult to truly grasp as an outsider, we involved the users as much as possible. Therefore we chose to present five design concepts to them of which they provided us feedback. Their positive feedback centered around two concepts and we decided to join them into one idea: Audioguides. One user said it:
“(…) Maybe by having someone articulate all those barriers that exist it could help. To get confirmed that it is damn difficult attending a christmas lunch and you experience tons of problems when you are there, but you want to try anyway. To have those difficult emotions recognized, it could even be compared to a shrink.”
We chose to co-design the audioguides with the target group using their personal stories describing what it is like attending events. Using techniques from the fields of positive psychology, cognitive therapy and mindfulness we developed a manuscript were we addressed the difficult emotions one might experience, but also provided tools from mindfullness and positive psychology to help them overcome the barriers.
We chose to co-design the audioguides with the target group using their personal stories describing what it is like attending events. Using techniques from the fields of positive psychology, cognitive therapy and mindfulness we developed a manuscript were we addressed the difficult emotions one might experience, but also provided tools from mindfullness and positive psychology to help them overcome the barriers.
