References

Mental Health Posters – Patrick Smith

Process

Prototyping

To try and get a grasp on what the final outcome for the patient will look like, I decided to make a note of how I had felt that day and create a visualisation based on the pre-written rules I had set.

As most of the design choices were already set, it was quite nice to allow my subconscious to do most of the work – it was even more interesting to look back on this after a few days had passed as it strangely made a lot of sense to me, without the need for the descriptions above it.

I think this is certainly heading in the right direction and I would hope that the element of curiosity alone may work to encourage people to come forward about their own mental health struggles.

To gather another example I repeated the same process, again going off my own feelings from that day. Although the overall image has changed it is still clear that there are some repeating factors.

Another idea I had was to create a pack of communication cards that the patient would go through to highlight the symptoms their experiencing to their doctor. Although I do like the idea of a tactile approach, I’m not entirely sure how this concept would work in reality, instead of speeding up the process it may instead elongate it.

However, it was still a concept worth exploring. Using the same rules I had created already surrounding colour and shape, I began create some examples of what kind of things would be on these cards.