Browsing by Subject "Design for healing"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Garments as healing spaces : conceptual clothing for emotional regulation, connection and resilience
(2023-08) Meinert, Maria Vidal; Catterall, Kate
Garments as Healing Spaces is a conceptual project that uses conventional and experimental design methods to explore clothing as a form of personal architecture, with garments serving as “wearable spaces” for emotional regulation and embodied connection to self and others. Enclothed cognition describes “the powerful influence clothing has on our cognitive processes and behaviors.” (Adam and Galinsky, 2012). Like architecture, the materiality and symbolic meaning of our garments deeply affect us in overt and subconscious ways. Expanding on the parallels I see between clothing and interior space, I position myself as both designer and “client,” using a synthesis of human-centered and autoethnographic design methods to ideate and prototype a series of garments addressing the overwhelming anxiety, isolation and sense of dislocation I experienced during the early months of the Covid pandemic in 2020. This introspective and somatic process of designing for myself (design for one) resulted in a collection of garments and practices crafted to support my own agency, emotional well-being and resilience through the affordances, interactions and elements of ritual and care they provide.
Trauma bonds : physical manifestations of healing
(2022-05-06) Gillmar, Chloe Christina; Lavigne, Sam (Samuel); Garmon, Gray
Trauma Bonds: Physical Manifestations of Healing is a speculative design project that uses traditional and experimental design methods to address addiction-related trauma. By using introspective research methods, I position a younger version of myself as “client” to tackle problems that arose due to my parent’s long-term struggle with substance use disorder (SUD). Through ideation and prototyping, I design objects that respond to the material effects of addiction that I faced as a child and teenager, including cigarette smoke, a lack of resources, and the prevalence of theft. However, these objects serve many purposes beyond solving these problems, including emotional validation, externalizing progress made in processing trauma, and providing a foundation for the next steps in the continuous cycle of healing. This thesis details the similarities between the process of healing and the process of design, as well as providing an exciting glimpse into how design could be used as a tool for somatic therapy and working through trauma.