Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

In an era where “non communicable diseases are now the greatest cause of morbidity” worldwide (Matheson et al, 2013), this research aims to consider the relationship we have with our health. In a culture of health vs. disease, design will act as a catalyst for change and advocate for the concept of personal health management for chronic disease-planning. This research will create opportunities for people to play a role in the design of health portals for health management. I will research how design can provide people the tools needed to self-organize to create communities that support people as they become ill. This is beneficial for personal and societal well-being, as “self-management support policies reduce the fiscal burden on health care systems” (Bornkessel, Lefebvre 2013). The aspects of managing a chronic illness or disease “go beyond one’s own capacity for managing and network ties are called upon selectively in order to deal with such problems” (Bornkessel, Lefebvre 2013). In a series of probes and co-creation sessions, I will have participants envision themselves suddenly becoming ill, and ask whom they believe to be the most important people to them in relation to managing their condition. I will use a generative approach to drawing out concepts from the four levels of knowledge people hold within; explicit, observable, tacit and latent. This approach is used to ensure my co-creators are able to “reflect on and express their needs and values in order to explore future scenarios of use” (Sanders 52). I will conduct ‘toolkit’ sessions and equip people with carefully chosen 2D and 3D materials, with a dual focus on creating a visual network, and time-mapping – creating an abstract idea about “how events might unfold over time” (Sanders 70). This approach will invite participants to design their health-management plan and emotionally commit to the concept of health management. This research, combined with a series of interviews with chronically ill patients and their advocates, as well as health practitioners, will begin to frame the next stage of my work; the co-creation of health-portal design. The meta-design methodology will form the theoretical basis for my project. Meta-design “creates new media and environments that allow the owners of the problems to act as designers” (Fuad-Luke 151). Metadesign goes beyond the user-centred and participatory design methods that are well know in today’s design community. Meta-design encourages and empowers people to provide ownership for their problems. This is an especially important task in a health-design project, where behaviour change solutions provide an opportunity for personal and social growth. By purposefully under-designing the health network portal, it will “permit the system to evolve” (Fuad-Luke 151), as the end-users engage in it’s continued design through use. The ability of meta-design to provide a design space that is seen as co-evolutionary, enables this approach call on participants in the system to “work together in a social, cultural and ecological interdependence” (Dinur, Fuad-Luke 154). This interdependence is vital to the creation of lasting social networks, as “demands for products that are more easily personalized or customizable, tend to offer the promise of more durable emotional relationships” (Fuad-Luke 95).