what if technology makes you think critically about mental health?
if you are interested in critical designs/design fictions OR just a mental health enthusiast wondering how you can use technology to look into this social issue, this is for you!
Indian sense of patriarchy has prevented men from being vulnerable and has put men in a position that might be making it difficult for them to express their emotions and mental weaknesses. On the negative side, this led to the mental health taboos and ignorance by men who succumbed to this system for years about their own mental illness. The target of the critical design and design fiction (presented below and explored through the design process) is to build knowledge among the users through their interaction with my designs about the need to have treatment about their mental illness. This knowledge gained by the men might help them get over the taboo through many personal reasons (for example, a threat of getting away from loved ones) and get medical help as if it's normal. This when multiplied in huge numbers can probably have a better impact on the society and their outlook about men being emotionally vulnerable. This is definitely my assumption, but a starter for channeling my thoughts through my designs.
Based on this fixed design space, I went ahead to ideate critical designs and design fictions. These have mostly taken the form of hand-drawn sketches and are presented below under the following themes: Fading Away, Rippling Effect and Automation. I was also mostly ideating around those kinds of technology that the user group has access to or is comfortable in using (in current world scenario) such as mobile phones, ear phones, and cars.
Theme 1: Fading Away
Under this theme, my main aim was to create a sense of distancing and losing through technology. The designs created use this notion was blocking, fading away and cancelling out as main themes in the ideas below:
Idea 1: Disappearing and fuzzing out appearances
With this idea, I am using a VR headset or VR glasses on my user group. The user will be asked by the researcher to identify if they know any people they are seeing in this virtual environment. The user’s loved ones are intentionally placed in this environment and the user has to mark them or point at them using the virtual pointer.
The main of this idea is to highlight the repercussions of their relationships with closed ones or impacts on them. During this interaction, the user observes that their loved ones are fading away and distancing into the background. To amplify the situation, the noise of strangers talking also increases alongside to blur the voices of the loved ones.
Why is this critical Design?
This design allows designers and users to see the power of technology on the kinds of emotions it can create in a user's life. Through this example, and the rest of my designs below, I realized that I was trying to look into how technology automatically takes this role in making my user group think about their decisions by either making them feel guilty and scared or taking away the agency from the users. Through this VR setup, it is building this knowledge in the user group in multiple ways:
Impacts or repercussions of not curing and talking about mental health illness. This is shown in how the loved ones are faded away and the user not being able to get a hold of them.
Plus, how fading away is reduced with the treatment to a certain extent, making them realize the pleasure in having company and not losing someone.
This experience of losing cannot be created in real life as we cannot make humans disappear and technology allows us to create that scenario. This helps users look at the world differently than just taking the loved ones for granted in such situations and actually taking the effort to break the taboo to get some medical or expert help before the situation worsens.
Idea 2: Auto- Blocking
Extending on Idea 1, I was thinking of another idea (Idea 1.1) for the possibility of the user group not really taking expert help is the momentary relaxation that they have by talking to loved ones or well-wishers about their anxieties or nightmares. This puts them in a cycle of thinking they are doing fine, but are not taking appropriate cure.
At the moment of a panic attack, the user lifts up their phone. The phone senses the state of the user and blocks all the “favorite” contacts. At this instance, the only solution the user has is to call for expert help.
Thinking Critically...
As a researcher or designer, this was a very obvious thought that came to my mind to instigate the users to think if such a situation occurs through their technology. After sketching and ideation through this concept, it started to make me realize all the ways this can go wrong. What if the user takes a drastic step instead of approaching for medical help? There are so many features in our current technology that logs us out of certain important aspects when required. If this is in critical and sensitive moments like this, it might turn out to be a disastrous design. This highlights the importance of thinking through consequences through such design activities for designers to think out of the box about the impacts of their designs. This was very difficult for me to think of implementing and I was trying to pacify the design by providing access to those numbers when the user gets his treatment or approaches for expert help. But, is this the step when I try to incorporate the positive reinforcements just to cover-up the negative punishments I implemented through my designs?
Theme 2: Technology Control
Under this theme, the ideas that dealt with automation of technology or the user losing control over their own interactions with their technology are categorized. The main aim through this theme is for the technology to behave a certain way for the user to reflect on the need of having to take expert help about their mental illness.
Idea 3: Noise Cancellation
With the increase in voice interfaces, in 2050, everyone would need something to cancel out surrounding noises as they are walking or travelling in public transportation. This happens in a more seamless way with chips embedded in human ears to create a vacuum and need not have huge noise cancelling headphones.
But with the agency taken away from the user, this technology takes a call to cancel out noise of family conversations at dinner times or important discussions with colleagues, making my user group feel the necessity to go treat themselves about their mental illness. This sounds odd in the way it is connected to mental health issues, but the idea builds on theme 1 to distance the user group from their loved ones and make them realize that they will gain back their connections when they get some expert help. The scenario here plays like this: the user is having dinner with their family and he has been ignoring his sessions with the medical expert or therapist and the phone detects this whole situation to start taking control of the chip embedded. The phone takes a call to cancel the noise in a family gathering and the user cannot manipulate anything on the phone screen to do otherwise. This is a reminder for the user about the impacts of not treating their mental health, similar to theme 1, and the sense of vacuum replicates the emotion of mental anxieties of emptiness and mental fogs.
Idea 4: Smart Car Decides
Under this theme, another dimension to technology taking the decision without the user's agency is to auto-drive the user to the clinic where the user has to get their treatment. With the advent of connected devices in home and car contexts, the user’s car knows the calendar of the user. This allows the car to auto-drive the user to the clinic for a scheduled appointment not giving the user to miss it.
Building on this idea, the caretaker or family can actually inform the user’s car to auto-drive to the appointment. The user will have no agency in this decision and has to attend the appointment. This can be a good example of “forced action” dark pattern which is defined as “requiring the user to perform a certain action to access (or continue to access) certain functionality” in the context of UI design.
Idea 5: “We want justice” Propaganda
Another better way to get information across about anything in India is the media coverage an event receives and my user group can accept it through TV or WhatsApp messages “forwarded”. Fake campaigns can be created and shared on WhatsApp and shared with the user group. But, here this is just treated as a medium. The main idea is about the propaganda, strike or protest that is started by young men who fight for their right to express their emotions in public with placards and slogans.
The placards held by these young men represent their fight for their rights of expressing and say “emotions are my right.” This looks like a natural norm for a human, but not if you think about it in a patriarchal society. These young men are creating a social movement to fight against the stereotype of patriarchy and how men have to always be strong. This can also help build a positive attitude towards getting expert help for mental illness or anxiety issues among young men. The stereotypical representations of strength around gender in India really needs some reforming and this idea of mine might help think through that situation. When this protest hits the news and everyone views it like any other social issue in India, this can evoke emotional calibrations among families who have children and then even in the parents.
