Hi, I'm Kobi a masters student from Lancaster University and I'll be presenting our paper ManneqKit
cards a kinesthetic empathic design tool for communicating depression experiences
so the rationale for this work is threefold
firstly that depression is an affective disorder with complex affective
cognitive and physical symptoms but the lived as the lived experiences of
depression are often less accessible and difficult to understand for researchers
one method which attempts to combat this is empathic design through methods such
as narratives and roleplay but these often emphasize verbal communication
however many aspects of depression are non-verbal and thus, there is a demand
for novel empathic design methods that emphasize nonverbal communication to
explore this we focused on the following questions
what are the key lived experiences of depression how can these experiences be
represented through postures and what value these experiences and their
representations have for the design of technologies for depression to approach
this we conducted co-design workshops with 10 therapists to elicit postures
representative of depression we then used these to inform the design of ManneqKit
and this was then evaluated for the ability to elicit empathic response in a
pilot study and the value in the design process for digital interventions for
depression in a bit more detail the aim of the first study was to extract key
aspects of depression and how they relate to the boss posture and the body
10 therapists were independently interviewed during which they're asked
to identify key aspects of depression then provided with a kit that you can
see on the right that consisted of a wire model colored playdough and they
used these tools to represent the aspects of depression that they
discussed key findings include diverse descriptions and postural metaphors for
depression so for the metaphor based descriptions
these include metaphors like depression is black and depression is weight which
documented heavily on literature we also present a new metaphor here depression
is contraction the metaphor relates to external forces coming in from all
directions and is illustrated by quotes like closed and trapped
symptom-based experiences include things like emotional symptoms like sadness or
lack of enjoyment physical symptoms like lack of energy or fatigue and cognitive
symptoms like negative thinking or negative outlook another key finding is
the contextual information added to postures using the colored play-doh like
small gray or black balls depicting the head to represent lack of motivation
flat gray shape to represent weight or objects like rocks and stones again used
to represent weight but also where in the body this weight is felt of the 29
postures generated 24 was simple and 5 were complex so for the pilot stage of
the 2nd study the aim was to assess the communicative power of these postures
and also the ability for the postures and the text to elicit an empathic
response from non therapists the four therapists were interviewed in person
and an online forum was given to 10 non therapists in this online forum which
you can see examples of here on the right the images of the posture and the
texts were showed along with an empathic scale given to each
participant they were then also asked to identify the top three most effective
postures a key finding of this study is the combination of posture and text
based descriptions elicit a stronger empathic response these results formed
the cards which we present as a kinesthetic empathic design tool
consisting of postures of depression and accompanying vignettes the design of
these was informed by the role of the body and depression the importance of
embodied experiential meaning in empathy and the relationship between
bodily postures and depression again existing empathic design work emphasizes
verbal communication but these leverage the nonverbal aspects
of depression we also detail the value of these cards when designing for
depression so to evaluate the ManneqKit cards we connect to the second study to
explore how they are for communicating lived experiences of depression and
their value for interaction design to do this we gave groups of interaction
designers a design brief interaction to depress
as well as each group was given five of the 15 cards given time to digest and
discuss the cards as a group they were then given 20 minutes to develop a
design and then interviews were carried out afterwards to explore the designers
perception of the cards and importantly the value of these cards in designing
their concept key findings indicate that the cards were useful in the design by
being emotionally powerful as well as allowing for an empathic understanding
of depression and how physical affective and cognitive symptoms are experienced
as a whole so more holistic representation I'll now summarize the
key insights of our work firstly lived experiences of depression are
metaphorically rich while the presence of physical and emotional metaphors
sorry while the presence of physical and emotional symptoms of depression is less
surprising what is surprising is the abundant use of metaphors of depression
such as depression is black and depression is weight a key finding here
as well as the province of a new metaphor which we call contraction this
involves both external and internal forces all encompassing and exercising
pressure towards the person living with depression this metaphor is also
reflected in phenomenological accounts of lived experiences but it's often
difficult to understand as it's both hidden and strongly unfamiliar to people
without depression findings also highlight that descriptions of lived
experiences don't often just represent one symptom or one metaphor but they're
often describes in conjunction with others but this can also be
contextualized through spatial and temporal details of everyday life such
as what they doing and when are they doing it or where are they the second
insight is that postural representations are creative and ambiguous so a fifth of
these postures were impossible to physically enact and this contrasts with
stereotypical postures described in clinical research our postures did not
merely capture physical symptoms but also emphasized in powerful and
evocative ways the richness of depression experience the
creativity required to generate them can lead to more ambiguous postures and
postures more open to interpretation and that these postures are generally more
evocative and able to elicit a stronger empathic response finally and most
importantly our work has highlighted the value of the ManneqKit cards as one
example of a new type of empathic design tool namely those leveraging bodily
qualities or bodily qualities of depression firstly the mix of vignettes
and postures complementing and reinforcing each other as findings from
both the pilot section of the second study and the workshops carried out with
designers we suggest the traditional narrative based methods such as persona
and scenarios can be extended to capture the nonverbal aspects of experience
through forms of craft through this one could achieve more communication of the
lived body secondly as holistic representation of depression the cards
managed to integrate postures and vignettes of depression which consist of
multiple physical cognitive and emotional symptoms providing a fuller
representation of depression and specifically how this experience can
affect everyday life in the design process these cards effectively framed
designers empathic understanding of depression and informed their ideation
underpinned by strong ethical values and lastly is the empathy paradox
so because the cards were both emotionally powerful they listed empathy
while at the same time presenting the challenge of negative emotions for
designers in HCI the importance of accounting for researchers and designers
well-being has been made previously but such work has focused on better
preparations or access to support peers we extend these suggestions of balancing
empathy with distancing suggesting the future work should explore how such
training can be designed and delivered both before and after emotionally
charged research thank you