Course Description

This course problematizes the way human emotion is addressed or neglected in daily interactions with people and objects. Through critical design, it raises the challenge; How might design be used to create objects for emotional wellbeing and mental health? Students will partner with an environmental psychologist, measuring how our built environment influences our psychology.

The course will be conducted in three phases: problem setting, design fiction, and making. First, students will think critically about the notion of setting a problem space for a project. They will concentrate on a contemporary problem situated in emotion and mental health care. Second, students study speculative and critical design in order to build and illustrate their understanding of this problem space. Students will create robust stories of design fiction based on their chosen problem space. Thirdly, students will give form to the story by building an object or series of objects that might live in this design fiction scenario.

Featured above are images of student work including process prototypes.