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My name is Michelle. This is a collection of my thoughts, project progress, and research for my MA Design at the Iceland Academy of the Arts.

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My reading of A Ghost by Cole Swensen.

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Top left: Accumulated data from survey Top right: Organized data into an affinity diagram

Bottom left: Drawn conclusions from affinity diagram, and some design directions Bottom right: Design planning, soundboarding  59 people responded to my survey. I was surprised at the quantity and quality of the answers I received. Even though the survey was anonymous, I still felt the significant amount of trust opened to me through the insights I received about respondents’ thoughts, feelings, insecurities from their inner lives.

Patterns quickly emerged as I arranged the affinity diagram:

— Coping mechanisms range from community-based (e.g. church, academia) to completely solitary (long silent walks, sitting in silence, meditation).  — One-on-one mediated coping was by far the most common way people sort through stress, emotional turbulence, and difficult decisions. People most often speak with loved ones (i.e. family, friends, and partners) and some sort of writing to sort out how they feel. “Journaling” came up often but I am not able to discern how regular of a practice these writing exercises are, or whether they spike in response to stress. — Those with seemingly healthy and balanced emotional lives typically had 3 clear patterns in their responses: 1) They check in on their own interior life without judgement (e.g. they “let” themselves feel what they feel, rather than treating their interior as “secondary” to their careers or other pursuits). 2) Related to one, they check in regularly with themselves, thus forming a relationship with their interior self that they take care of. 3) They have a strong support network of loved ones, friends, and / or worklife.

I am thinking about calendars, tarot, self-audits, daily rituals and how we make connection and meaning over time. Walks and journals, baths, and long conversations with friends.

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Although incredibly fascinating, I felt I was falling too deeply into theoretical readings in the fields of psychology and psychotherapy without a grounded perspective on what people actually do to sort out how they feel and cope with life and develop emotionally. To gain a better understanding of those things, I wrote a design research survey and distributed it through my social networks. Over 50 people have responded and already my previous focus on “teaching” emotional vocabulary feels reductive. From the feedback, an approach of developing experiential tools for self-reflection and for generating conversations with those close to us about how we feel seems much more appropriate. It seems that the process of these experiences are what foster better emotional understanding, processing and growth. My next step is to map my data on an affinity diagram, which I will post here when it is completed.

Interestingly, this feedback aligns with the following excerpt of an interview I conducted last week with Dr. Lee Whitman-Raymond, a local psychotherapist. The transcription has been edited for clarity—

MS: So when you start with a patient who has alexithymia, or is at least subclinical in some way in being able to identify or process or regulate or even begin to understand their emotions, how do you begin with them? With teaching them this whole realm that they just don’t practice in their life?

LWR: I don’t quite think of it as teaching, unless teaching is really experiential. It isn’t like, “Oh, that feeling is ‘sad’ that you just had.” Or you know, “This is what sad looks like.” It’s not quite that because… I’m not a CBT [Cognitive Behavioral Therapy] kind of gal. I think the way that we really grow and change is by what touches us and what we experience so I’d rather try to share somebody’s experience and then language it.

Survey questions not pictured:

4. How do you figure out how you feel about a situation? e.g. Rituals, habits, exercise, conversations with people in your life, self-reflection methods, therapy, etc. *

5. Do you use any self-reflection tools in your life? If so, what are they? *

6. How would you describe your emotional life? Please interpret and answer this question intuitively and freely. *

7. In terms of gender, how do you identify? *

8. What is your nationality?

9. In terms of race and ethnicity, how do you identify?

The * denotes a required question.

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Surveying patients at St. Joseph’s Health Center to gain a more precise grasp on the language needs of the patient population. When I shadow Dr. Snyder, we typically see 10+ patients in a shift. Nearly half, or more, need the assistance of a translator. 

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Alchemical symbols for boiling, fixing, tin, and annealing. I drew these from Adrian Frutiger’s classical text Signs and Symbols: Their Design and Meaning by Frutiger.

In my search for a way to represent emotions symbolically and in a tangible, holdable form, I am currently researching the work of Carl Gustav Jung. He wrote extensively about alchemical symbols and its relevance to psychology.

“The world of alchemical symbols does not belong to the rubbish heap of the past, but stands in a very real and living relationship to our most recent discoveries concerning the psychology of the unconscious.” — CGJ

“The Opus of alchemy, viewed through this interpretation, becomes a symbolic account of the fundamental process the human psyche undergoes as it reorients its value system and creates meaning out of chaos.”

In introduction to Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis: An Inquiry into the Separation and Synthesis of Psychic Opposites in Alchemy, Edward F. Edinger writes, “In effect, they dreamed a vast collective dream using chemical operations and materials as imagery and subject matter for that dream. Alchemy is that great collective dream, and what makes it so important for us is that it's the dream of our ancestors. The alchemist were rooted in the Western psyche which we've inherited, so their imagery, their fantasy, their dream, is our fantasy and our dream. That's what Jung demonstrates so magnificently in his major works on alchemy.”

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I am redesigning the wayfinding for the first and fourth floor of St. Joseph’s Community Health Center. These are images of some of the existing signage. Aside from being text heavy, it is only in English, whereas a significant portion of the clinic’s patient population speaks only Spanish or K’iche (a Maya language of Guatemala), or cannot read at all.

Row 1: Existing flag system for exam rooms on fourth floor.

Row 2: Signage on fourth floor, including a workaround added by staff.

Row 3: Signage and wayfinding on the first floor for handicap accessibility. 

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Miyagi Municipal Peer-City Exchange Center.

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I reimagined Plutchik’s wheel into separate diagrams because two layers of combinations are not visible on the original.

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Nicolette Bodewes’ communication toolkit Tools for Therapy. 

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I visited the Special Collections at RISD’s Fleet Library. I requested to see artists’ books loosely exploring collections, field guides, and the naming of things.

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The existing signage in St. Joseph Health Center.

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U1/W12

I. LOGISTICS

—I am in Providence, Rhode Island. —Currently, I am a fellow at the Design Office (DO). The DO is a co-working space in downtown Providence for professional design firms and individual design practices. The fellowship gives me full access to the studio space and the generous feedback of its members. —My daily resources include the library collections of Brown University and Rhode Island School of Design, and the Design Office. —I miss Icelandic geothermal pools. Providence does not feel as magical as Iceland but it is an excellent place to focus.

II. EMOTION PROJECT

—A few weeks ago I revived my Individual Project II from spring semester, but I felt so stuck. I consulted John Caserta, a graphic design professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, and he recommended that I try reframing my questions to elucidate my values and reminded me that form serves those questions and values. He also helpfully pointed out that graduate theses require the student to create content and form, and the importance of parsing out the two when tackling my thesis work.

—Reworking my approach to the emotion project. Use of color, shape and tactility to teach emotional literacy remain priorities. However, I am abandoning all other assumptions—especially my hindering focus on form (i.e. I prematurely decided I wanted to create an artist book prior to delving deeply into field research and related experiments)—and returning my research phase. It feels necessary to do so in order to progress.

—So, I am diving with higher resolution into the psychological constructionism theories of Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a clinical psychologist. In particular, the research regarding the construction of emotions, emotional granularity and emotional regulation. Dr. Barrett puts forth an emergent approach blending neuroscience, cognition, bodily input, and social reality to assert that emotions are situated conceptualizations. This perspective strikes me as highly contemporary, with significant implications for everyday self-perception and wellbeing, psychotherapy, and popular psychological vernacular. Ideally, my next step is reaching out to Dr. Barrett to discuss creating material expressions of these theories for practical use by psychotherapists and individuals.

—Reading Speculative Everything by Dunne & Raby, White by Kenya Hara. Spending a lot of time with the work of Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and Neri Oxman because I love how they think and their level of craft is so beautiful. I can feel my mind loosening up and running more freely. I also saw Daisy speak at the Better World By Design conference yesterday as its closing keynote.

—Olafur Eliasson’s essays Some Ideas About Color and Emergence of an Artwork.

—I visited the Special Collections at Rhode Island School of Design yesterday and spent slow time with a handful of artist books. The  librarian did a great job of responding to my inquiry for ‘playful typologies’ and whimsical classifications with a diverse set of artist books. The ones that stay with me now are Balzaculator : Angela Lorenz / PIG 05049 : Christien Meindertsma / Artifacts : Laura Davidson / SYLVÆ / Part of Thought : Maxwell Cozzi.

III. CLINIC PROJECT

—I Skyped with Dr. Sheree Cairney on Monday about her work and my upcoming project. Dr. Cairney is an Australian neuroscientist and public health researcher who has been working in remote Aboriginal communities for almost two decades and a professor at the Centre for Remote Health at Flinders University. She works at the intersection of population health, culture, neuroscience and behavior. We spoke about methods for engaging with vulnerable communities; developing metrics that are truly relevant to the community and reflective of its values (as opposed to top-down impositions of mainstream values); and supplementing qualitative research with quantitative statistics. 

—My first observation shift at St. Joseph Community Clinic is on September 29. To prepare I am reading Design Probes and Empathy Probes by Finnish design researcher Tuuli Mattelmäki, and researching participatory design tools. However, I will not generate any of my own probes, tools, or workshop plans until I shadow for at least two sessions. I want to go in with receptive senses and an open mind.

IV. WRITTEN THESIS

—I’ve read the relevant documents about the written thesis and its guidelines. Will begin writing steadily this weekend to steadily accumulate editable pieces to stitch together a cohesive work over time.

—Ideally, this time will equilibrate into a seamless mix of reading, absorbing, researching, writing, thinking, and material experiments.

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Notes on a Soft Landing

— Settled into a comfortable apartment on Wickenden Street in Providence, Rhode Island. It feels good to be back in familiar surroundings. — Writing and editing my personal statement for medical school primary applications. — Working on the 2017 series of IAA graduation project highlights for HA Magazine. — Working on a joint journal paper about industrial design as a health intervention to facilitate successful aging.  —Applied to the Design Office’s Fellowship program yesterday. Hoping to access studio space downtown for the 6 month period I am here. — Reached out to Dr. Amy Snyder—an OB/GYN physician who volunteers her time at an under-resourced clinic in Rhode Island—to arrange clinical shadowing that will lay the foundations for a design project that I am currently approaching as open-ended. — I need to continue writing the text for my project Field Guide to Everyday Emotions and Feelings. I also need to reflect upon and incorporate Jamar’s feedback regarding the graphic design and conceptual execution.