Future Experiences Project by The Glasgow School of Art

FUTURE EXPERIENCES PROJECT Process Journal Holly Thomson

FUTURE EXPERIENCES An exploration of the future of cancer care within the context of the next 10 years, post-COVID and collective intelligence. a project with Lucas Cheskin, Zuzanna Konieczna and Mateutsz Boruc.

Key Terms

Collective Intelligence The enhanced capacity created when people work together, enabled by technologies, to mobilise a wider range of information and connect people to people, people with data, and data to data.

Part 1 Part 2

Project Outline

Initial Research

AndThen Workshop 1

GOODD Design Workshop

Expert Input Day 1

Future Experience Exhibition

AndThen Workshop 2

Expert Input Day 2

Discover

Interim Review

Testing

Deliver

Final Product

Reflection

developing our future worlds

initial research & STEEPLE cards

Define Discover

GOOD Design workshop

Develop

future world exhibition

Deliver

external input day 1 AndThen workshop discovering our future world contexts

part 2

part 1

PROJECT TIME LINE

receiving feedback on presentation and video

initial of pro

Define

receiving feedback and advise on design proposal

l research oject brief

external input day 2

Discover

Develop

interim review AndThen workshop discussing our individual design opportunities

curate & display of final work

creating a graphic identity

Deliver

testing form and shape of objects making workshop to create objects which were intuitive and comfortable

PART 1 Creating our future world based on our given future scenario of personal wellbeing.

INITIAL RESEARCH After being briefed on the project by various medical experts and our tutors, the first half of the week was spent creating STEEPLE cards, in our groups. We divided up the different categories between us (I took Education and Economical), and then came together and clustered them into different trends which we found amongst them. We also created a time line of the different cards, and divided them into our different initial users that we had generated in our discussion with the experts. This allowed us to discover what trends we saw for ’personal wellbeing’ in the future. We found self-screening and overall awareness of symptoms of cancer to be a big trend for the future, with there already being numerous apps available on the app store dedicated to this. Diet is also something we found to be credited to be changing in the future, with the possibility that we may all have personalised diets, due to nutrigenomics. We also see environmental changes having a big impact of personal wellbeing in the future, with many environmental aspects already increasing cancer rates, such as pollution. Click the circle to view my sketchbook on padlet.

What is Personal Wellbeing? Individual Resources

Environmental & Social Resources

Physical Activity & Healthy Diet

Safe Housing

Positive Emotions

Economic Security

Autonomy

Stable Ecosystem

Social Ties

High levels of personal wellbeing are associated with: Better Immune Functioning

Speedier Recovery

Decreased Risk of Illness/Injury

Increased Longevity

Brainstorming stakeholders for personal wellbeing.

ANDTHEN WORKSHOP 1 After presenting these on Thursday, we then participated in a workshop, called ‘Unintended Consequences’, with studio AndThen. During the one and a half day workshop, we explored who the stakeholders involved in cancer care taking are through our specific lens of Personal Wellbeing. From there we used this to create user journeys for 2 of these stakeholders. We then came up with what the first, second and third order consequences of collective intelligence are, in relation to personal wellbeing. This week was first spent trying to get used to having to meet my group and all those involved in the project on zoom. Having to negotiate how to present ideas and future predictions over zoom and mural was an interesting challenge, especially as some of the group had never used STEEPLE cards before. The workshop with studio AndThen at the end of the week was a really good exercise for our group. I think that throughout it we became more used to generating quick ideas together, as it’s bizarre at first not to be able to put up post it notes together in the studio, but having to do it digitally. By the end of the workshop we had narrowed down our 5 key scenarios for the future that we thought related to personal wellbeing, and were probable from our STEEPLE cards and unintended consequences we had come up with.

Cancer Survivor: Returning to Education/UNI Struggles to keep up with new material Wake Up

Breakfast

Commute

Ariving

Meeting New Classmates

Stress due to return

Interacting with peers

Struggles to keep attentive during lecture

Asked how they are constantly

Tired

After class interaction with teachers

Receiving support

Happy to have support They don’t really understand the situation

Annoyed

Hospice Caretaker: Confronting family after their family member has died

Realising the Mental Prepares space Sees family Greets family Answering Gives family some bad news preperation for privacy arrive and breaks the questions regardspace news ing deceased Upset

Nervous What am I going to say?

Gives family masks and PPE

Provides information regarding further actions

Feels bad for the family Have to keep their composure

GOODD DESIGN WORKSHOP After a tutorial with Janet, we were in a good place as a group, and all agreed on the direction we wanted to take our future world and develop during the future world workshop over the next couple of days. We all decided that following on from the insights we gathered from our steeple cards, we were going to look at an extreme health-driven society. It was interesting to discuss with Janet how a world which perhaps seems perfect and idyllic, can actually have major side effects, including mental health, and a potentially privatised health care system. We developed this world further during our 2 day workshop with Brian from GOODD Design. This workshop was really helpful in promoting us to imagine not only what our future world is like, but what going to the doctor looks like in the future, and what ‘artefacts’ might be included in that journey. We looked into medical chipping, and how potentially in the future you will be able to monitor your healthcare through a simple patch on your skin. We also mocked up a digital service to g alongside this, which would be semi-automated, and would prompt you to make changes to your diet, exercise and lifestyle, or in an extreme case, create you an appointment with a GP. To pull all of this information together, we created a video to showcase this world, and how these products fit into it.

Experience mapping creating a medical appointment in 2030.

Exploring what ‘props’ to use to explain our future world.

EXPERT INPUT / DAY 1 Expert Day was extremely insightful for us, and we received some really good feedback on our presentation and video. I was pleased that our video seemed to really communicate the world we were trying to present well, and there were some really interesting discussions which stemmed from it. One of the most interesting insights was regarding education and self-care, where the idea of “health moving closer to home” was something that we thought fitted in very well in our version of the future. We also talked a lot about how having a chip which relayed data straight to your medical advisor would lead to a huge increase in demand for GP’s who are already overworked and cost the NHS a lot. Looking forward I think we are keen to explore more into a more self-health driven society, where you have more autonomy over your health care, and there is less of a strain on the healthcare system. Having to create a video remotely was a really interesting challenge this week especially in such a short space of time, but I think that we divided up the tasks really well, using everyone’s skill set. We did need to revise and link some of our research done on our 5 future predictions, as I feel they confused some of the experts. Also, the expert day presentations were a really good chance to practice presenting to non-designers, and although I was worried they would maybe be a bit awkward and impersonal (especially over zoom), they were all extremely helpful and always willing to answer the questions that we had.

FUTURE WORLD EXHIBITION This week was spent curating our digital future world exhibition. It was the first week so far that we didn’t have a workshop on, and so with the exception of a tutorial with Janet we had to divide up our time ourselves. After a tutorial Tuesday morning we had an idea of how we wanted to present our exhibition, as we were a bit stuck on Monday, and understood what was needed to be added or clarified for our current presentation/concepts. Zuzanna had the idea to create a clear scale of how a ‘healthy lifestyle’ is actually measured in the future. We came up with the ‘Health Risk Factor’, which take into account your environment, diet, social ties and overall health score. We then came up with how we thought this might effect various aspects of our future world, in relation to our personas we created. These included applying for jobs, housing, and even how our social lives might be effected. Our world is based a lot off of a society which is left scarred by the effects of covid-19, and many of the practices such as having to self isolate sometimes, or having a smaller social circle, have become normal. We divided up tasks, and created some personas, and digital prototypes for our future world. These included XD mock-ups of a website for job hunting in the future, and a concert for a dating app, which would heavily relate to your HRF. These were then edited into scenarios, to show how they might be used.

Name: Tom Age: 20

Goes to university in the city, but lives outside of town near the countryside

Occupation: Student (online)

Eats a balanced diet

Likes

Key STEEPLE Cards

Keeping active

Age bias

Socialising in virtual pubs

Gaps in education

Over thinker, becomes anxious easily

Struggling to adjust to normal life again

Name: Jane

Works night shift 7pm-7am

Age: 45

Has a child in primary school

Occupation: Nurse

Limited time to make nutritious meals because of being fatigued from job

Likes

Key STEEPLE Cards

Meeting her friends for coffee and catching up

Faster detection methods

A glass of wine in the evening

Healthcare moving closer to home

Name: Mark

Lives in the centre of town

Age: 57

Has a dog, stays healthy walking it

Occupation: Bus driver

Eats a lot of frozen and take away food Shy and introverted

Likes

Key STEEPLE Cards

Going to the virtual pub

Air pollution

Socialising in virtual pubs

Nutrigenomics

using co laws against tobacco use and limiting alcohol use

getting rid of pollution

packaging unhealthy products in Pantone 448c (ugliest colour)

ecoarchitecture

peo may

can’t advertise unhealthy food

environment

limiting people’s autonomy ‘healthcare is moving closer to home’

post covid-19 consequences

FUTURE 203

more tailored treatment support groups might have to exist only online

people more cautious of their environment

collective in consequ social interaction diminishes

more tailored treatment

data used as a means to control people

positive consequences negative consequences

personali suppli

ombination of CI and AI

detecting diseases as early as possible

over diagnosis GP relief system automatically sends you to specialist

decrease costs of treatment (due to faster detection)

ople who are sick y be marginalised

chip, monitor and track

privacy concerns around data sharing chip educates people

what will the NHS look like?

people who are sick may be marginalised

health focused society

WORLD 30

not everyone who gets cancer is unhealthy

ntelligence uences

might have negative effect on mental health

you don’t want someone with poor health as your partner

perks with leading a healthy lifestyle

more stress on ‘Healthy Infrastructure’ encourages social interaction post covid

parks, cycle paths, etc.

ised diet and imentation

FUTURE WORLD 2030

The graphic for the website to go alongside our video, to show the key features of our future world.

Dating in 2030... Your HRF will become a crucial part of your life, even affecting the people you hang out with, and who you date/who wants to date you.

Ordering Food in 2030... Your HRF monitors your diet daily, ensuring that you are maintaining a healthy, balanced diet. Depending on what you have eaten that day, your HRF score will indicate what food you should add to an order or swap to, to ensure you have met your daily nutrition goals.

Working in 2030... Jobs will be advertised, with HRF specifications. Companies will also use perks such as low health insurance and treadmill desks to try and encourage employees to work for them.

Living in 2030... People in specific roles will receive perks for working towards a healthy society, such as NHS staff.

The feedback we received from our exhibition/ presentation was really useful in pointing out the crossover between the working (Prevention & Detection group) and living (our group), in relation to cancer. We discussed a lot about how prevention was something that was much more difficult, but is extremely important, especially going forward, in reducing cancer cases. This was interesting seen as it is something which relates heavily to both of our groups areas. I think we also need to look more specifically at cancer, rather than just healthcare in general. Although we are trying to set a future world for our individual work, we do still need to put some focus into how cancer is placed into it. Using personas really helped us this week, achieve more of a story when it came to presenting our ideas for the future, however I think that we can go even further with them. We also need to think about how to engage people more in our narrative for our final exhibition, for example how we can perhaps make it more interactive, or more of a story through the eyes of a user.

PART 2 Identifying my area of interest within the future world we created as a group, and developing it within this context, and in relation to a specific user.

ANDTHEN WORKSHOP 2 This week we began the individual part of the project. We spent the week narrowing down our group work to find a specific user and scenario within our group subject that we wanted to continue on with for our project. This began with us generating 5 scenarios we were interested in, to bring along to the AndThen workshop. I struggled at first making these futuristic, but eventually decided the aspect I was most interested in focusing on was “cancer moving closer to home”. I took this forward into the AndThen workshop, where we developed our user within this scenario. I found I was interested how a young person living within the future world we had developed, would cope if they were living alone, with an illness. I though this was interesting from the perspective of this taking pressure off of our health service and workers, and creating more freedom for people to make decisions regarding their healthcare. However, if you have all of your medical equipment around you at all times, it may become a constant reminder to you that you live with an illness, making it difficult to switch off and negatively effecting you’re mental wellbeing.

Exploring different scenarios for my chosen user, to decide what direction to take my documentary.

We were tasked with creating a 1 minute documentary on the Thursday of this week to present our future world and the context of our scenario and user within it. I got some positive feedback that my video’s narrative was good and that the graphics were nice, however I do feel that I could have made it a bit cleaner in terms of how I filmed it, as it was quite rough around the edges. I found creating the ‘script’ for the narrative of the film really useful, as it forced me to really concisely show what I want to focus on. My design opportunity for this project is: How to make autonomous, at home healthcare less stressful for the user, so they can have the knowledge they need to understand what treatment they need, while maintaining a god mental wellbeing. It was really interesting to see how differently everyone approached the documentary, and especially to see how my group had taken our future world into such different directions already.

Click on this hyper-linked image to view the development video

or click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbnvwGrX_2E

EXPERT INPUT / DAY 2 Our second expert input day involved us presenting our future world briefly and then diving into our individual projects, to receive feedback from the experts. I had a helpful insight regarding young people in Japan who live with and help out an elderly person in exchange for cheaper rent. They also spoke about how there is currently a shift towards chemotherapy being carried out within the local community, to make treatment more convenient and to cut wait times for treatment in big hospitals. The topic of Covid-19 making this ‘healthcare at home’ scenario even more feasible, due to more and more aspects of our lives moving to the home. I found it interesting to see how different the directions we have all taken from our collective view of our future world are, especially as this was the first time I had seen the others present what their final opportunity for the project was.

Storyboarding the ‘day in the life’ of the my user to find pain points.

DISCOVER After a drop in with Nicol and Katherine, I began to really set my context for my scenario in the future world we had created. The different roles that we saw being part of our future world was mentioned both in our expert input day, but also in this drop-in session, and so I began to imagine how new roles such as citizen medics, might work within the my context of healthcare at home. At this stage I was still unsure of which route I was wanting to take in terms of my ‘healthcare at home’ scenario, as I was largely interested in how collective intelligence could inform the communication between the patient and a medic, including how they would receive the information they need to part-treat themselves. However, I also thought that emotional communication was a really important aspect of this, as my persona lives alone, is largely isolated from friends and family, and (in this future context) has had their personal living space turned into a hospital ward. After talking this through, Kat advised me that she thought that these weren’t that separate at all and that these would come under the same context of communication for wellbeing. The most helpful question I received was from Katherine: What does Personal Wellbeing mean in THIS context? I think that unconsciously, I have discovered that a person’s (physical and emotional) personal wellbeing is heavily influenced by communication. Within this scenario, this can take the form of having information about their recovery and general health communicated to them effectively, having communication with the medical expert they are in need of, and being able to communicate with a loved one. 33

patient

emotional communication

communicating with their loved ones

medical communication

communicating their mental health to medics

communicating their health stats to medic

In preparing for the interim review, I began to explore where I wanted to take this direction of both emotional and medical communication. I researched into ways of monitoring human emotions, and found that skin conductance, pulse and heat are ways of sensing human emotions. I was really interested in this idea of ‘silent communication’, and how this could work well for my user, given that, as a young male, he may be prone to saying "I’m fine" when they really aren’t. They also may not want to discuss their treatment every time they speak on the phone. I also found the link between patients needing their vitals taken daily, and some of these ways of sensing emotions, such as temperature and pulse, might be a way of communicating both medical data and emotional data.

Name: Tom Age: 22 Occupation: Student (online)

Patient undergoing cancer treatment at home Lives alone and undergoes stress due to social isolation Suffers from anxiety around medical treatment progress

Painpoints Medical equipment around his small home acts as a constant reminder of his illness, causing stress and making it difficult for him to unwind His family and friends lead different lives and do not always have the time to talk, due to their work/families/responsibilities Needs A way of communicating which is not stressful and can be worked around the busy schedules of his family and friends A way of providing medical stats that is easy to use and does not take up space in his home

Sketching different ways the objects to be held and interacted with.

INTERIM REVIEW

The interim reviews, were really helpful to my project and I was able to have a really good discussion about what direction I should take my project next. Nicol spoke about how patients often say they are ‘fine’, and how they define this as “Feelings Internalised Not Expressed”. I also spoke with Kirsty about thinking about this as a living system/a system to live with. I really liked this idea that this product/service would follow you throughout your journey of recovery and maybe even afterwards. Tacit Knowledge was another interesting point of discussion during my review (knowledge that is difficult to write down, visualise or transfer from one person to another). It summed up the ‘silent communication’ I am aiming to convey between my users. I also found Kirsty’s comments on a ‘Living system’ really interesting, as these objects exist daily alongside you. A Living System | A System to Live With From this review, I understood that I needed to consider how collective intelligence fit into my outcome. I feel that as I am handling communication, that collective intelligence will come through in the shared knowledge created through the various users involved in this scenario. Not only will there be shared medical data, but I also aim for this toolkit have the capacity to connect people emotionally.

Exploring different ways of interacting with shapes and objects, using sponges, to look at what shapes might work ergonomically for the set of objects.

Exploring different ways in which medical stats, such as heart rate, could be assessed.

TESTING Once I had decided what objects I needed to create for my toolkit, I created initial models of how I thought they should look. I modelled these in clay, to allow them to me changed and adapted when I used them in my workshop. I then took these objects, and asked people (within my Covid bubble) how they would use them. I gave them information on my general project, without telling them what the objects specifically did, so I could receive honest feedback on their ergonomics. I found that some of the objects, such as the temperature were less obvious as to how to use, without me explaining, and the heart rate devise, was adapted to be less bulky and easier to hold. I was glad I ended up using non-drying clay, as it ended up being really useful in the making workshop, as people could mould it on the spot to show me how they would want the object to be held, and/or shaped. It was invaluable to be able to hand over the objects that I had created myself, and receive blind feedback from other people, as I often found that something that I thought was obvious how to use to myself, was actually not at all for someone else. It was good to be able to play around and see what shapes and forms worked and which ones did not.

Making workshop - trying to figure out how people would intuitively use these shapes, and how they would like them to look.

Temperature

Heart rate

Temperature

Respiratory

DELIVER As a group, we were fortunate to be able to ‘pitch’ our projects to a young cancer survivor, who commented that when you are living with cancer, too much information can have a negative effect on your mental heath. From discussing what feedback these objects should have and what information they should convey with him, I was able to finalise what the feedback should be. He was most interested in the idea of conveying emotion through light and touch, and said he thought this was the most intriguing part of the interaction here, especially with having to be in isolation. The concept that your medical data would be collected by these and you not have to constantly know how your body is was another aspect which he said would be good for your mental health, and suggested information be relayed on ore of a weekly basis. The Collective Communication Toolkit allows for both medical and emotional data to be silently communicated through a series of objects, which exist in and around the home. They cover 4 main vital signs, both medical and emotional: temperature, respiration, heart rate and anxiety levels. These devices allow for daily collective intelligence of the tacit knowledge of emotional health between a patient and a loved one, through the use of a paired object in a loved ones home, which communicates how the patient is feeling through light. They also communicate the patients daily treatment progress, by providing data on their vital signs.

“TOO MUCH INFORMATION IS A BAD THING” an interview with a young cancer survivor

Temperature is measured by placing this object in front of the your forehead. It uses infrared technology to determine what your temperature is.

Respiratory Rate is measured by holding this object in front of your mouth and breathing into it for 30 seconds.

Heart Rate is measured by pressing this object over the left side of your chest, and holding there for 10 seconds.

Emotional Health is measured by squeezing this object to show your stress levels. Anxiety Levels are measured by breathing into this object as you would breath when meditating. Its paired object conveys this through the use of light, to silently communicate the patients mental health to their loved ones

Patient undergoing cancer treatment, providing daily vitals & accessing how they feel

Data Programme & Citizen Doctor medical communication of both physical & mental health

Family & Friends emotional communication of stress & anxiety through breathing and touch

Illustration of the stakeholders within the system of communication.

Final storyboard of the entire service and uses of each product

Click on this hyper-linked image to view the final video

or click here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZV6QtBmkmk

Future World Context In 2030, your health risk factor is tracked daily, to afford faster detection and ensure people are rewarded for good health. Tom lives alone in a flat, and is undergoing cancer treatment there. His only interactions are with citizen medics who drop off supplies and help out with some of his healthcare needs. Both Tom and his family worry about his treatment.

FINAL PRODUCT The final toolkit consists of 4 objects, which I propose would be made from silicon, so to allow the objects to contain the necessary technology required for them to operate, but also this allows for light to shine through effectively. I also feel that silicon not only has an aesthetic finish but is also practical, with a good grip, which is an important aspect seen as they are all hand held objects. The toolkit has a service which pairs alongside it, that allows the user to check their healthcare data when they wish to, but also allows them to keep track of their healthcare appointments and deliveries, so they can stay on top of their own healthcare. MEDICAL The medical communication objects allow the patient to communicate their daily vitals to their medics, as healthcare is largely completed at home. The objects are designed to be discreet, so to not stand out within the users small space, and become a reminder of their illness, as medical equipment within the home was a painpoint for the user. They are also designed to be ergonomically intuitive, so that the user can comfortably and easily use them daily. Another key painpoint for the user was that having too much information every day about how their medical data, was often stress inducing, and not something that they always understood, as when you undergo cancer treatment, your vitals fluctuate more than on average. Making the ability to view the data received from these objects optional, was another decision I made with these, for this very reason.

EMOTIONAL The emotional communication object allows the patient to silently communicate their mental health with their loved ones through their touch and breathing. One of the painpoints of the user is that they are constantly having to have conversations about their health and treatment when they talk with loved ones, which can act as a constant reminder that they are sick, and can often lead to their communications with loved ones becoming stressful. This product aims to relieve that stress and make it easy to for them to communicate with them daily.

lonely

melancholy

‘thinking of you’

anxious

content

frustrated

optimistic

User checking their health data on their phone using the collective communication toolkit service.

collective communication toolkit

38 C

12 breaths/minute

66 beats/minute Objects for communicating the daily physical and emotional health of a cancer patient.

high stress

The collective communication toolkit creates a collective intelligence between a patient and both their medical staff and their loved ones .

REFLECTION Overall I have found this project - despite having to work remotely - the most collaborative project I have done so far. Being able to speak with experts both in the field of design, medicine, and others I hadn’t even heard of (for example a health economist), was crucial to both our individual and group outcomes. Working remotely, especially in a group was definitely the biggest challenge during this project, but despite it sometimes becoming a barrier to us communicating as a group, there were areas where I think that we were able to work well. I do feel that we would have benefited from developing our future world even more, to make the second part of the project easier on ourselves. Although we were able to create a future world through the various workshops that we had to develop it, I think that when we did not have that structure, we struggled as a group to develop this world any further, due to part 2 of the project taking a front seat. If I were to do this differently, I would definitely have pushed for us to work together more on the future world, rather than for it to become such a divided task. If there were more time left in the project, and in different circumstances, I would have loved to have more interaction with the objects I was designing. Although I was able to run a (small) making workshop within my COVID bubble, I missed the interaction of passing an object round the studio, or being able to physically discuss something with the experts and tutors. This being said, I hope that I was still able achieve objects that were intuitive and ergonomic from the user feedback I could receive.