Digital Mental Well-being in the 21st Century
With the guidance of a guest practitioner from Scotland, Sarah Drummond from Snook challenged us to prototype our ideas in the real world. For one intensive week, we worked together to exchange ideas and participate in quick prototyping techniques to communicate ideas through craft, body storming, illustration, model making and props.
Our group, Know Stranger aimed to explore the impact of strangers on everyone's daily commute and interactions. We tried a number of ways to interact with strangers in Melbourne, focusing on how to encourage open conversation and give them an opportunity to express themselves. As a result, we developed a project that enables individuals to become advocates for their communities’ expression of wellness. Should it be successful, our long-term hopes would be to see a reduction in the stigma surrounding mental health and encourage everyone to practice continual mental self-care.
Know stranger recruits friendly volunteers willing to spare their time to help make Melbourne safer and more supportive to everyone. As a pick-me-up, we played on the idea of taking candy from strangers and created little care packs to be given to people that interacted with us. These care packs included a few starburst lollies and a challenge to encourage people to reach out to their friends and fellow neighbours through simple acts of kindness.
This was a group project developed as part of an Atelier Studio directed by Sarah Drummond from Snook. The team consisted of myself, Josh Suklan, Chistopher Chen, David Cheng and Shibing Yang.
Process
Activating space
One of our quick protoypes was a public board for people to express themselves. On a blank wall, we asked ‘What makes you feel good?’ and left a box of chalks for people to help themsleves to. The following day, the wall was filled with writing and drawings from passersby.
Social engagement
During our rapid prototyping and testing, we worked as a team to engage with young people around the city. We used cardboard mockups, signs and t-shirts to attract attention and engage in friendly conversation. This user-testing allowed us to discuss our ideas with potential users and observe what methods of approach were most successful.
Presentation
For our final presentation, I worked on some t-shirt prototypes to help create the look and feel of our design proposition. We chose to co-ordinate the colour scheme with ‘R U OK’ day, considering the possibility of this project becoming a new public engagement to raise more awareness of mental health in the city.