Void touch
EMOTION
Emotion is a feeling that cannot be expressed or communicated through words. In this case, it is about depression. Being under depression is not a simple word that people will understand until they experienced it themselves.
After conducting an interview with the stakeholder, we could see an opportunity that we can visualize the emotion deep down of depression from the perspective of the stakeholder; what does the world look like from the eyes of the person.
Therefore, we came up with the exhibition under the name “Void Touch” that presents the emotion of the individual who faces depression through senses including smell, see, touch, and taste.
Meet the team
CK, TAI
We sat down in a Korean restaurant around the university and talk about the problem that we want to work on. When thinking of emotion, we had to same thought that was depression. So we decided to work on this topic.
Assumptions
List of assumptions that we have on people with depression. It helps to shape the interview questions that we would like to prove our assumptions and explore more about this particular field since we both don't have much knowledge about depression.
Interview
E (21 years old)
E (anonymous) is a friend of mine from high school, who has been facing depression for many years. I contacted her one week before the interview day and sent her a sample of our questions to see if she feels comfortable to be asked.
The interview took place at the coffee shop in Siam Square One, Bangkok.
Persona
A 21-year old woman who grew up in a big family with her parents, 2 sisters, and 1 little brother. Currently, she is waiting to apply for the faculty of architecture (Commde), Chulalongkorn University after she has dropped out of Mahidol University (MUIC) almost two years ago due to the depression that distracted her from studying.
E walked us back to the starting point of the depression when she was in grade 2. During that time, her friends turned back on her and gossiped about her in a bad way then the rumor spread all over the grade, eventually, it reached E. Time passed, the scar in her mind got bigger when she went for exchange in Belgium in her 11th grade. She faced pressure from the host mother and got discriminated against by her gender and nationality among friends at the school. After she returned to Thailand, she talked about her feelings to parents but none of them understood. Therefore, they took her to a doctor and got into the recovery process.
Everything went normal in her life until the first year in the university when the depression pulled her down to the deepest part of her feeling, which is a suicidal thought. She felt like there is no reason to face the outside world. Her brain was too blanked to think of anything.
To be in her position, she doesn’t want any comfort or cheerful words from people. All she wants is someone to listen to her and understand circumstances, not trying to push her too hard by giving her advice or way out of depression.
The responses on assumptions from the interview
Valid: People treat her like a patient and think that depression is easy to get out, therefore, she has been suggested by others to relax or don't overthinking while the problem is a chemical dysfunction in the brain.
Invalid: This person handles the depression by taking medicine and she knows how to communicate her feelings to others, but people do not really understand her.
Valid: Reality and environment are too toxic for her to be because she doesn't feel comfortable with her parents and she has been mistreated by friends. She usually expresses her feeling on Twitter.
" It is like depression is an outer that controls and prevents me from being my true self. I feel like I’m stuck under the sea. "
Idea generation
At first, we were thinking of a platform that allows people to talk and express feelings to each other. But then we thought back from the beginning that the problem is the difficulty to communicate the emotion and having the platform will not solve or address anything if a person does not know how to tell the feeling.
Therefore, we looked into the interview and raised up the point about the comparison of depression in color, smell, taste, and objects. Finally, we decided to create an exhibition that consists of 5 different rooms expressing different aspects of depression through the story of the interviewee (E).
Visualizing the idea
The exhibition is designed to be narrow at the end to create a feeling of uncomfortable and pressure to whoever walks through the exhibition.
The concept of the exhibition is to make people learn the emotion of depression through the five senses.
Creating Prototype
Idea in the paper
We took an hour of the studio session to plan on the details of each room in the exhibition, including table, artwork, mirror, and walls. We drew the idea on the paper to see how realistic it could be before getting into the Sketch Up program.
Storyboard
The prototype of sequences of the exhibition from the entrance to the exit. The storyboard visualizes how the visitors will feel and interact with the elements in the exhibition.
Stroyboard (continued)
The prototype of sequences of the exhibition from the entrance to the exit. The stroyboard visualizes how the visitors will feel and interact with the elements in the exhibition.
Sketch Up Session
The picture above is my first building inspired by Powerpuff Girls in the Skill Builder class. I got to learn how to create a design on Sketch Up program. The program is quite complicated due to the multiple layers of objects on the artboard.
Sketch Up Prototype
After having sufficient knowledge about the program, we turned the idea on paper into the program to illustrate the exhibition in a more realistic way. It took about two hours and a half to finish creating the prototype.
Feedback
We did not test the prototype with users but instead, we sent the prototype back to E whose story has been turned into the exhibition. Here is her feedback.
Conclusion
Emotion is an intangible thing that people find it difficult to communicate with others. Especially for depression, which happens to people in different symptom and it is rarely understood by normal people who have never had the experience of being depressed. Void Touch is inspired by the story of the interviewee that she described the emotion of depression from her perspective. And we turned her words into tangible objects that can be touched, seen, and smelled. The design has not been created in reality yet, but we believe that it will be able to convey the feeling of depression to other people as it has been agreed by the interviewee that it really describes how she feels.
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