This week’s project is called “21st century designers”. It is in collaboration with Jewelry and Textile Design. The 21st century designer not only has to solve problems but also hast o find them. We have to train our self to be critical observer.
The challenge of this week was to work in a team and discuss the vulnerable topic of breast cancer.
The brief asked for a design within the business of Health Care. It asked to transform how people perceive breast cancer and increase everyday behaviors that support is diligently. This brought up a couple of questions: What is the challenge of a designer nowadays? What has changed, how does the future look like? What kinds of problems do we have to deal with?
We started to gain as much information as possible about breast cancer, so we could get a deeper understanding about the topic. It was most fascinating that getting a mammogram can help reduce the number of death from breast cancer by 30 to 40% among women ages 40-70.
On the second day we had an insight look from a breast cancer survivor. Her cancer was discovered when she was in the early 20th. Everybody is aware about the risks, but who is actually reacting? In a small survey we asked the simple question: „Do you check your breasts on a regular base“among women 18-26. Only out of 53 five said they would check them self regularly, most didn´t know how to do it, and some said only if it was brought up (by GP, leaflet). This is where we found the missing link between already existing campaigns and the poor reaction of the young women. Our concept makes young women aware of breast cancer and encourage them to check them self on a regular basis.“ Our research question is: How we can design a service/product, which shows the importance of knowing your breast and encourage them to check once a month. This can decrease the period of diagnosis significantly.
On day two we jumped right into prototyping. We had different ideas, like squeezable breasts in which you could find lumps, to wearable breasts with the same function. But educating wasn’t enough.
We wanted to create an everyday reminder.
On the fourth day we focused on designing some kind of packaging for body care products. Nothing too aggressive, just a daily reminder and instruction of how to check your breast.
After some research we came along the charity pot from lush. Lush donates 100% of the price to small, grassroot organizations. Additionally, they have the product called “Lovely jubblies”, which is a breast cream. Lush is an ethnical company we all could identify with. But as much as we focused on lush at the end the design is still transferable to other suppliers, which offer body care for women.
Us talking to Lush and getting positive feedback:
We produced a couple of prototypes including packaging, stickers and wrapping paper:
Design by Bekker 