Everyday life
What would we change if we were more mindful of our everyday life experiences? Using a framework of participatory design research methods, I designed a series of co-creation and journaling activities intended to explore how individuals who work in Canada perceive their daily lives, and how they develop resilience to potential everyday life stressors.
JOURNALING RESEARCH
In this participatory design research participants were encouraged to write and draw their reflections about how they perceived their everyday lives. Over the course of one week, 12 participants indicated how they perceived their lives from an emotional, mental, physical, and social perspective; the possible reasons for such feelings; and how this mindset led them to actions and behaviours that might have helped them to alleviate stress and keep their peace of mind.
CO-CREATION RESEARCH
During this co-creation activity, three individuals expressed how they perceive everyday stress in relation to three different mindsets: their present experience, their feelings and behaviours built over their own past experiences, and their expectations for an envisioned future.
This activity enabled participants to express how they perceive stress in their current routine; identify possible sources of stress; understand their thoughts, feelings and usual reactions to these stressors; as well as express what they envision as possible de-stressors.
RESEARCH DATA VISUALIZATION
The responses gathered from this participatory design research resulted in this data visualization that shows the aggregated information on how the participants perceived their everyday lives from an emotional, mental, physical and social perspectives during the research, as well as on the type of activities they are mostly likely performing daily.
Both the journaling and co-creation research favoured a personal and intimate space for reflection, encouraging people to connect to the stories they live everyday through self-expression. It also suggested that we build our own knowledge through our daily actions, and through the stories we live, tell and envision.
Human-centred design
Participatory design research
Subjective data visualization
Everyday life experiences
/ Research design
/ Research recruitment + facilitation
/ Data analysis
/ Information design
Project created as part of my thesis for the Master of Design program at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, 2017
This project was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, under the Canada Graduate Scholarships-Master’s Program (CGS-M), 2016.