WINTER RESCUE: OTHER WAYS OF LIVING WITH TIME

Today people have become more and more sensitive to their living objects and have advanced their requirements beyond traditional aspects of usability, to an emotional level. Many studies have shown that emotions have a strong influence on our general experience of well-being, i.e. people’s own evaluation of their lives (Desmet, 2002:p1 cited the work of Diener & Lucas, 2000).

Consequently, the concept of designing has evolved to pay more attention to emotional response. Emotion involves complex intuitive thinking and it is difficult to read peoples internal emotion based on their outside action? How can peoples emotional experience influence designing? A research project titled Winter Rescue addressed these research questions.

The Winter Rescue project aimed to investigate emotional response to seasonal variations of light during the winter months, especially in northern countries. Some people suffer from a significant mood disorder related to low light levels during winter and if the problem reaches a serious level, clinicians refer to the condition as Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) (Apollo Health, 2005). The Winter Rescue project did not attempt to address the clinical needs of people suffering from SAD, rather it dealt with people’s emotional state typified by lethargy or feeling sad and down, caused by a lack of bright daytime during winter. A general emotion problem cited by most people as distinguished from a diagnosed medical condition.

In the Winter Rescue project, a solution to this general emotional problem cited by most people was developed from a designer’s perspective. Instead of aiming to design a functional product, the study focused on “designing for experiencing and designing a context for experience” (Wensveen, 1999:p23). This focus called for a series of design methods to access and capture people’s life experience in winter in order to understand their emotional state, to inspire related design concepts and to meet people’s physical or psychological needs.

The research demonstrated that by using visual methods to engage with peoples experience it is possible to gain an objective view of people’s emotional response and to gain a new perspective for designing. In visualising people internal thoughts, which sometimes people themselves don’t realize, both negative and positive experiences should draw our attention. The former offers an opportunity to generate new design ideas or to modify existing objects; the latter offers and insight with regard to winning people’s emotional agreement.