This week I run out of steam when it comes to educating adults about ways to decarbonise and save money around the home. I pivot towards two potential project directions: mental health and children’s education.
Lippmann produces striking exhibition visual through generative techniques. He work takes familiar scenes and objects and renders them in entirely new ways, creating visual interest and achieving the holy grail of abstraction: communicating a feeling.
It is exactly the achievements of her abstraction that I can learn from. Learning to communicate emotion through digital work is something that benefits any digital designer and helps us bridge the divide between digital and traditional techniques.
WHERE ELSE MIGHT EDUCATION BE NEEDED?
At this stage, I was very much avoiding an educational tool that would have future impact (i.e., educating kids so that they would carry the knowledge with them into adulthood). I’d wanted something with more immediate impact, so I asked where education could deliver that.
Returning to my fuel poverty research, I was reminded that fuel poverty can affect the psychological well-being of many people. Although it would depart somewhat from my decarbonisation focus, this offered some potential for a new direction: design for psychological well-being.
I had some freedom here to redefine my target audience since a design solution fr well-being could be aimed at anyone within a household. The question was, who in the household might be most psychologically affected by fuel poverty?
The health impacts of cold homes and fuel poverty (Dear & McMichael 2011)
The research (see above report by in the BMJ) was conclusive in this area: young people – particularly teenagers – were more at risk psychologically than any other group.
WHAT SPECIFIC FACTORS CONTRIBUTE TO THIS?
My design solution would need to get to the specific root of the cause of psychological issues among fuel-poor teenagers, so I attempted to untangle these.
This was again something that had been well documented, and it became clear that both bullying and a reduction in the quality of personal, social space were prominent causes. Kids may be prone to bullying from other kids due to issues maintaining personal hygiene and in general for being different. Further still, as families are forced into smaller spaces to stay warm, the space teenagers have for their personal use are reduced and eliminated. This can include space to have friends around, leading to further social isolation.
