Lundahl & Seitl, Symphony of a Missing Room

Designing beyond interpretation

Can Experience Design communicate experiences that are beyond interpretation, specically to increase awareness and understanding of mental well-being in secondary level education? We are reaching an inection point where insights from genetics and neuroscience can transform the understanding of mental disorders. In 2010 Nature editor Philip Campbell predicted that this would be the decade for psychotic disorders. Social Science makes ongoing and essential interpretations of this new knowledge but as Design becomes increasingly comfortable working across disciplines, we begin to ask where the value of design lies, and where does its scope lead us. We ask how art, or design in its own right - not merely as illustration, can develop our understanding and knowledge of the human psyche, in a way that cannot be achieved with scientic descriptions.1 This project is not an attempt to unlock the complex interplay of genetics and experiences thought to cause mental disorders nor a project in immersive education technique but explores a creative approach to the pressure points when experience inuences how we communicate and understand a subject. The project aims to discover if we can design experiences within education that will inuence active and positive perception amongst the emerging generation. Both as an awareness to reduce stigmatization, and as a preventative measure helping to recognize what being mentally well actually feels like. It is claimed that ambiguity in art, is what makes a work of art great - it allows us to make a different response to the same artwork, and different people to create different responses2. Designing a sense of ambiguity from artistic practice into a guided experience we are able to encourage thoughts and trigger memories, inspiring a dialog between internalized discovery and external inuence. Through experiences that jolt the senses and engage the mind, we are able to stimulate conversation and awareness. Holding a space for openness to new ideas while sharing a designed experience. Designing the core experience: Using a combination of ethnographic and design research, stories are being gathered from people with experiences of mental disorders. These raw narrative elements are to be combined with expertise from a hot group of neuroscience, sensual arts, psychology and education specialists in a tumble process of design development and creation. Embedding the core experience into a cushion of mental health education: This core experience will be framed with a service design approach and submerged into educational settings for beta phase testing. Focus groups of teenagers and teachers will trigger iterative cycles of evaluation and development. Creating identiable value - attracting nancial sustainability from external investment: This thesis has never set about to end as a nal piece in the Konstfack Spring exhibition. At the point in which valuable contribution to understanding mental well-being are emerging from the project the aim is that the project no longer relies on arts funding to scale and develop, but through revision and design nds its own legs.

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Elsa Ekes Thambert 2011 Frgfabriken Stockholm Eric Kandel 2011 Nobel Forum Lecture Uncovering the Conscious