Author: Cheyenne Von Thun Und Hohenstein Veit

This example was about osteoporosis and explained how cool water improved the overall exercise. This is because inside a hot pool or hot water moving is getting hard since the body gets too hot which leads to burning more energy meaning the residence to exercising becomes lower. That’s why training in the cold is recommended.

https://youtu.be/COJu8AHII2I
The challenges she faces with her patients:
Not being motivated to train,
Suffering from depression since a stroke changes many peoples lifes
And they believe they are already to weak and limited to work out
Motivating in this case can be a human close to them in their life.

Since many stroke patients are depressed the exercise also helps with mental health, not just with their physical movement.

Demographics: Age: Can be used by any stroke survivor of any age, in this case a 48 year old Gender: Non determined Parental status: 2 children Marital status: married
Geographic: Most likely to get used by patients that can‘t access physiotherapy institutions easily, live in the suburbs or small towns.

Psychographic: Hard to motivate when alone, does not see the point in the training tools they were given, after using a few tools given by doctors and much usage of them in the beginning, they gave up early and did not stay consistent, values their health and sports and was active their whole life, nevertheless after the stroke when movement got more difficult they got lazy, only can be motivated with a physiotherapist, but with only seeing them one time a week the consistency is simply not enough, hopes and dreams to advance their movement and strength on their left side of the arm, fears not just not to get better but also worse, with getting weaker and weaker, wished to be active with the family again.

Behaviour: Is ready to spend an amount of money on a product when it has been recommended by a professional or if other patients around them already improved, is ready to purchase quick but tends to also forget about the items as soon as they arrive at home or seem to complicated to use or too useless, already has done many purchases but was disappointed many times.

Pricing point for this customer: The pricing point for this customer would be a gaming pack between 150-250 pounds. This would cover tactile, water, light, etc. elements.

STRENGTHS

-Helping stroke patients get better soon

-Motivating them on their journey

-Able to get access at several facilities and institutions such as hospitals, home and rehabilisation places

-Can therefore be used by more people

-Make people train on a daily basis instead of just once a week with trainers

WEAKNESSES

-People might get in a bad mood, nervous and act hectic if they keep on failing and loosing the game

-People might get more demotivated instead of motivated

-Brain damaged patients might struggle to understand a game on their own

OPPORTUNITIES

-Further development of the game in the future

-Worldwide integration

-Can be tried by several age ranges

THREATS

-Self treatments that are completely free

-Other companies who develop stroke motivating training products

Kari Dunning explains the hope she has for stroke survivors in this talk and clarifies that strokes often start with arms feeling heavy and when they start feeling they are harder to move, as well as speaking and words get less clear. This can be imagined as mumbling.
Overall she shared that 1 out of 6 people experience a stroke in their lifetime. A stroke happens when there is a lack of blood going to the brain. This is followed by part if the brain dying and brain cells, also know as neurons. Everyone has billions of neurons in their brain and those neurons work together and build pathways. Those pathways then go from the brain to the muscles and make them move, make a person grab and walk.
When a stroke takes place the signals from brain to the body parts get disruptet.
And this is the reason why people can‘t move their hands, feet or their arm after.
But the positive side is that the brain can reconnect. This in specific is called neuroplasticity.

In her practice she uses TMS, which can look inside the brain. With a device you can check where a connection from the brain to the body is and where it isn‘t.
Since the stroke is clearly damaging the brain, reconnecting takes time and much practice and this continuously. A positive process will only be visible with persistence. But there is a way since is proven by science that the brain can rewire for which reason this woman is persistently fighting and hoping.

While looking and researching games for children and adults that are played in different kinds of settings, one game caught my interest, which is the ”strong man game” and can often be found at fairs during summer time.

This game tests someone’s overall strength, and as this is the purpose of my project (to find a game that can be fun and enhance the power of the hand for stroke survivors), I was thinking of ways of how to adapt this so it is suitable for a stroke survivor.

The next thought that came immediately to my mind was the game I was given when I was a teenager to train my breathing, (as I used to struggle with asthma). This led me to the thought of creating this game to train someone’s hand instead of testing the strength of the lungs or the arm.

As mentioned in previous blogs, stroke survivors often use a ball they press to train their strength. What was particularly investigated through interviews was the fact that stroke survivors often don’t find the motivation to use their objects to get better.

Just as I had my motivation game in which you had to breathe in as much as possible and try to make all balls inside the pipe fly, a game in which the stroke patient has to squeeze the ball as much and often as possible to compress it to a certain point, just like in the ”test your strength” game, would be interesting to create.

The ball could be connected to a small tube and the game could show how far and strong the patient is on this specific day. This could motivate the patient to make it to a higher score the next day, but will also show if they are weaker than the day before.

(Both images above were created with an AI platform in order to represent the nonexisting idea)

Additionally to that, there are two similar games which could be transformed and adapted which are ”Catch the light”, as well as a hammer game in which children have to hammer a ball or object as soon as it pops up. This could likewise be transformed into a small tablet that the patient could hold in their hand and press either on the light or press down a tiny object as soon as the light comes on or the object arises. In this case, it would be more motivating and engaging for the user, and would persuade them to continue, which a simple ball would not do. This would ultimately train the fingers.

Having a phone-sized game, just like the image below but possible to use by hand would be best in order to also press proper buttons, but an adaption could be made for iPads or phones as well.

Below there are again AI-generated images to represent my idea

A further idea would be transforming a rubber band game into something engaging. A board could get laid out with little pins on it and as soon as a light appears on the board with a certain color, the player would need to pick to right color of the rubber band that matches the color of what the board is showing and this direction would need to get follow and the player would need to stretch the rubber band from one pin to the other. This could work with a timer so the player would get motivated to work with the hand as fast as possible before putting on the next rubber band.

Link to intervention:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1P3tc_4D_fepWtpY4x2XVXlTEYpkQfgrvm85N5zC4ZvM/edit#slide=id.g259ac49357a_0_2

Direction:

Example (Participant 1):

Analysis:

This intervention did not receive many responses, however the ones received were very good initial starting points for me to generate more ideas for games and water therapy. All the feedback considered is for mobility and well being, hence there are many possibilities for fun and engaging activities to encourage physical improvement in stroke survivors. Especially, the underwater boxing and coin game are points and suggestions that I will take into consideration for my future stroke patient game.

Inspiration image for my game that has been created with AI:

Questions:

1. From your experience, do you think light has a healing capacity?
2. How does light affect your mood and well being within your practice?
3. Have you ever experimented with light to encourage healing?
4. Are there any particular methods in your lighting processes to engage your viewers in a specific way? Do you think these could be incorporated into rooms within hospital environments?
5. Do you think hospital patients (especially stroke survivors), could benefit from light therapy?

Answers:

1. We have evolved as diurnal beings, light is essential for the processing of Vitamin D through our skin, and we have developed sense of sight to perceive and understand the world around us and function within it – aside from the practical aspects of this, there are wide-ranging implications for the effect this has on us psychologically and on our general well-being. So the short answer would be yes, however, as an artist I’m not particularly interested in the process of healing, I am interested in provoking a response, and I’m very aware that the quality of light, and it’s context within my own work, can affect the mood of the viewer, and provoke new thoughts and ideas.

The mood of the viewer can be a very subjective issue, at my last show some of the visitors commented on the relaxing and meditative quality in my work, which I found it a little perplexing as I’d actively built-in elements such as flashing lights and unpredictable changes in the sequence of programming LEDs to create a sense of unease. Other visitors had a very different experience, and seemed to be very stimulated by the work and commented on the use of expanded polystyrene packaging and discarded cardboard packaging, and how these “toxic” materials had been recycled/reappropriated to look so beautiful and draw attention to contemporary issues of pollution.

2. On a personal level one of the significant aspects of my work is about my own perennial issues with insomnia and its affect personal levels of stress and anxiety, and trying to express these to other people. In short, I spend a lot of time in a dark place, awake, trying to control repetitive thoughts and anxieties when normal people sleep, in my studio I spend a lot of time in the dark space trying to express, amongst other issues, how this feels. Whenever I’m working with light, or expecting people to engage with my work in an exhibition, the first thing that I do is introduce them to a dark space. I’m very conscious that this puts them in a vulnerable and cautious state of mind, and that I can use this situation to control how they perceive my work. It’s not about light itself, but an extreme contrast between light and dark. On a personal level within my practice, the closest are probably get to any sense of healing is a cathartic one.

3. No.

4. As I mentioned in question two, the contrast between light and dark is integral to my work so the first method I use is to present my work in a controlled dark environment. To engage people visually I use light in ways that people are maybe not familiar with in normal situations, for example projecting light through expanded polystyrene packaging which shows its internal structures and spaces, as opposed to light projected onto an object from an external source which shows us its form. I also use the spatial relationships between LED lights, apertures and edges of discardable packaging materials like cardboard boxes, and surfaces onto which I project animated patterns and sequences of coloured light. The conceptual link between the projected and modulated light, and the original purpose of the packaging ( i.e. flat screen TV packaging, or Covid Test Kit packaging) is also important to the content of the work and how people engage with it.

The quality of light is very important – how bright the light is, the colour of the light, and how quickly the quality of the light changes. The contrast in quality of light within a sculpture or installation is also significant. Brighter light and a greater intensity of saturation of colour tends to provoke a more energetic and dynamic response, this can be exaggerated by using extreme contrasts, like complimentary contrasting coloured lights in close association, in addition, if the changing quality of light is unpredictably timed or sequenced, this can also increase the unsettling effect and create a feeling of uncertainty, but remember, how a viewer responds to this is very subjective – one viewer might feel scared or upset, and a different viewer might find the same experience exhilarating and exciting. By contrast, changes in quality of light that are slow, predictable, and repetitive tend to be more relaxing or hypnotic and calming, although some viewers might describe this experience as plain boring. It goes without saying that as an artist, I will work with both both of these extremes, alternately and simultaneously, to provoke a response in the viewer.

So to answer your question it could be possible to incorporate the processes that I use to control light in the hospital environment, but it would have to be a dark space to control the light within, and the context would be very important.

5. I believe that it could be possible for hospital patients (Especially stroke survivors), to benefit from light therapy but this is a very subjective response, I have no scientific experience to justify this.

The term “light therapy” is a very general one, for example are you talking about a form of therapy that could treat the physiological effects of a stroke – for example enabling stroke survivors to develop new neurological connections, or are you suggesting that light therapy could enable victims to be use existing undamaged neurological connections through which to reroute or reprogram themselves to facilitate thought processes and previous neural pathways that were destroyed by the stroke? Or alternatively is the role of “light therapy” one of treating associated issues such as well-being, stress and anxiety, and quality of sleep, et cetera?

The quality of light and its colour can have a significant impact and a person. Dr Beau Lotto for example has demonstrated that placing people in cocoons of different coloured light can affect their perception of time. Colour can also have a significant affect peoples moods and Strobe lighting can simultaneously have opposite effects in people and can induce a hypnotic trance like state in one person, and an epileptic fit in the person standing next to them. We also have increasingly strong associations with coloured light through the coding of information, i.e. traffic lights, mobile devices, led lights on electrical devices, and colour can have very strong cultural associations.

To answer this question effectively I think you need to be a bit more specific about what “Light Therapy” is, and what it is being used to treat. I think it would also be helpful to talk to Scientists, Researchers or qualified Health Practitioners and Therapists who have a more objective experience of how light, colour, and the change in quality of these in a controlled environment can affect a patient. The only artist that I can think of who has a background close to this is James Turrell, who studied experimental psychology before developing his career as an artist using light.

Analysis:

In response to my questions, this interview was very detailed compared to other responses, which also fine tuned my line of research. This artist, although they do not have direct experience working with light within a healing context, have definitely witnessed the effect of light and its healing properties from their responses to gallery exhibits. Viewers coming to their show have experienced calming and relaxing interactions with light. In their work, they have realized the impact of a dark room on the emotive sensation of viewers. This opens up the question as to whether light therapy could for stroke survivors have more beneficial impact within dark spaces? Other artists who have also done this method is Yayoi Kusama and Teamlab.

The artist also provided direction into more detailed routes considering light therapy and more avenues for research. I believe this feedback was one of the most beneficial responses to my research, as it proved that although the intentions of the artist were not to heal, light has the power to induce this effect on human beings regardless of even the artist’s initial intentions in their practice.

Evidence:

Questions:

1. What are the benefits of chromotherapy?

2. How could chromotherapy be integrated within hospital environments?

3. Are you aware of existing chromotherapy techniques within hospital environments?

4. Could stroke patients benefit from chromotherapy? Please explain how

5. Which healing colors could be integrated within hospital spaces?

6. How immediate are the benefits of chromotherapy?

7. Could you see chromotherapy combined with art forms such as film, projection, interior colors etc?

Response:

1.There are several benefits of chromotherapy, in addition to aligning the chakas, harmonizing and calming people, it also has an analgesic and anti-inflammatory effect
2. -
3.Not in hospital environments. At the health center I use protocols to lower blood pressure, anti-inflammatory and to reduce stress
4.Yes. Helping to regulate pressure and helping with self-esteem
5.The green. Some hospitals already use this color
6.After the session, the patient leaves feeling less stressed. The follow-up, depending on the problem, should have a daily or weekly session
7.Yes, colors have the power to reassure, how to make people more agitated. Some famous brands already use this technique

Analysis:

The response from the chromotherapist confirms how integrated this method is in having a positive impact on the human body. It is used as a tool for calming and relieving stressful effects, and the feedback from this interview suggests possibilities to implement these strategies into hospital spaces. Although, the therapist does not have much experience in hospitals personally, they do claim to reduce physical symptoms whilst working in a health centre. Overall, they are quite positive in addressing the direction of this research and how colour based strategies can transition into the health sector.

Evidence:

Answers are in Portuguese, the translation is above.

‘To understand the place of decolonization within design, it is vital to first get our terms straight: “Colonization” is rooted in indigenous peoples’ experiences of oppression—specifically, the seizure of native resources, as well as the embedding of Western ideology into society. ‘
I found this quotation from ‘Eye on Design’ article interesting, as it emphasized the necessity to coordinate my research effectively without any particular bias.

https://eyeondesign.aiga.org/what-does-it-mean-to-deconolize-design/

Applying decolonizing strategies to my investigation into Vastu Shastra and Feng Shui is essential to ensure that I represent these specific traditions and practices within their original context and without any specific bias.

My questions for the Feng Shui and Vastu experts were particularly aligned with analyzing how their practices could be incorporated into Western modes of existence.

I tried my best to develop questioning which raised awareness and respect for other traditions by asking the Vastu specialists to examine the role of Vastu within the Western hospital setting.

With this, Felipe Sbravate emphasizes the need for creatives to go ‘further beyond the small and still superficial practices such, for example, language representation, iconography, and cultural appropriation.’ I feel this is very essential when referencing imagery such as mandalas for my research as they are forms of sacred geometry and have relevant context elsewhere. Similarly, going forward, designing objects and games for patients using any form of symbolism from another culture will need to be analyzed accordingly to avoid cultural appropriation.

https://uxdesign.cc/decolonizing-design-what-exactly-are-we-talking-about-when-we-use-the-term-b104322ef343