health ddesign

Over a few weeks and 6 sessions Zara, Isha and I have been embarked on a Journey over zoom with Grayden and Alan over in Totem Lodge in the Sunshine Coast. Together we’ve been able to talk, share stories and create with them. In this we wanted to tell the story of Graydon and Alan. We were tasked to create activities to get to know them, learn about them to then be able to co-design with them to create a final creative outcome ot tell their story. Over a few sessions we design some activities, an either or activity to tell us about their perfect holiday or their childhood. We created some avatars together and spoke about their lives and their stories. We had to as a team put together a creative piece for them telling their stories. We ran with this idea of a passport as a wooden box hoping they can add future memories in there. Inside you find an ID page with more surface level information as you dig through you find postcards, stickers and stamps that relate to them and our time together. The more you dig the more you learn about them and their personality.

Graydon and Alan are definitely two different characters and we had a lot of trouble having them both in the room so we ended up talking to each of them three times each but were able to gather some good insight to who they are and their stories. Graydon was a lot shyer but opened up to us a lot more through the sessions - he had trouble remembering too much detail but spoke so only of his horses, plants and his wife.

Alan was quite funny - spent one session saying he’s lived the best life ever and that’s all he wanted to say. But he was an aircraft engineer, loved blondes and was quite funny. I created this activity to do with them to create an avatar. Allowing them to choose a from a few options of a face, hair, eyes etc.. until you’ve built a little avatar. I was trying hard to make it as easy as possible as they are looking at a screen and so we could easily know which element they liked the most. We ended up using the avatars later in the end result of our project as well. I also created an either or activity and often led a lot of the discussions.

Our initial idea was to create this sort of passport for them with images of things they’ve mentioned inside and stamps of where they’ve been but it slowly get evolving. I had the idea of stamps and then postcards to make it more interactive. Zara though we should put it into the box and that maybe the box could act as the passport and the ID is when you open the lid. We decided to add some stickers to that could be used or given a way. Then moved to creating a guide to the postcards to further elaborate on some of the stories and explain the quotes on the postcards belonged to Graydon and Alan.

In the end we created a memory/passport box for Graydon and Alan. Had it engraved. When you first open the box you see an ID with basic information about Alan and Graydon with the image as the avatars we created together. As you continue to dig through this box you’ll explore deeper into who Grayden and Alan are. What they like, places they’ve been and my personal favourites - quotes they’ve said in our time together. We hope this has helped capture a piece of the wonderful people that are. Each design considers something we’ve learned about Graydon and Alan or a story they’ve told us. We also want to incorporate our own personalities so we decided on a printing method and colour palette to help keep consistency. I was incharge of making the stickers, ID page, I did the avatar design as well during that activity and the postcards for Halifax, London, carrots, plane and the quotes of “I’m gone”, “I’m the baby” “I’ve done some water sports.”
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Graydon and Alan were both big adventurers and we wanted to play with the idea of adventure and travel and make a little kit. Within this box we are allowing space for them add more memories but also providing the postcards, stickers and stamps that speak to a piece of their personality. They can choose to keep them, send them or share them with friends an family. As well as some prompts for them to engage with. We spoke with Graydon and he helped us choose a direction for some of the designs and expressed any changes he thought we should make. He started thinking about who he would end up sending the postcards to.

Overall it was a really rewarding and fun experience getting to know Graydon and Alan and designing with them. It was so heartwarming hearing Alan talk about how he feels he’s just lived the best life ever so it’s not necessary to say anything else and Graydon seems like he’s lived such a great life to horseback riding with his wife to the beach. It was super fun to have them create the avatars with us to and give space for them to be creative with us. I also just love the quotes they’ve given us. I think it helped speak to their personality and really pull this project together. It feels so much more personalised and like you can get to now these people on a more personal level and get a feel for who they are. I had a really great time designing and interacting with them. Pushing myself as a design to to design only with two colours and just different opacity. It would have been super amazing to be able to meet them in person and give them this boxes in person. They both seemed really excited seeing the avatars they had made involved. Alan said “I love my picture” and Graydon was excited cus it was the first time he saw it put together. It was super nice seeing that they both remembered the activity and thought it was really fun to see their work put somewhere - it definitely made me extra happy since I kinda lead and created that activity to see that it meant a lot of to them. It was also nice to hear after that Alan got so excited to about it he had to run off to show the others.