health ddesign

Over six Zoom sessions with Grayden and Alan from Totem Lodge on the Sunshine Coast, Zara, Isha, and I collaborated to share stories and create a piece that tells their story. We designed activities to learn about their lives, like discussing childhood memories or perfect holidays and creating avatars together. The final creative outcome was a wooden passport box filled with ID pages, postcards, stickers, and stamps, revealing deeper layers of their personalities and our shared journey.

Graydon and Alan, two distinct characters, shared their stories with us over three sessions each. Graydon, initially shy, opened up about his love for horses, plants, and his wife, while Alan, a former aircraft engineer with a sharp sense of humor, claimed he’d lived the best life ever. To engage them, I designed an avatar activity where they selected features to create a character, keeping it simple for screen interactions; we later incorporated these avatars into our final project. I also created an either-or activity and often led discussions to learn more about their lives.Our project evolved from a passport concept to a wooden box serving as a passport, containing ID pages, stamps, postcards, and stickers inspired by their stories. We added a guide to the postcards to elaborate on quotes and moments, making the box interactive and personal. The result reflected their personalities and our collaborative journey

In the end, we created a memory/passport box for Graydon and Alan, engraved and designed to reflect their personalities and stories. Inside, an ID page features their avatars, and as you dig deeper, you uncover what they like, places they’ve been, and memorable quotes from our time together. Each design element, including postcards, stickers, and stamps, was inspired by their adventures, incorporating details they shared with us.

The box also allows space for them to add future memories and offers prompts to engage with. Graydon even helped guide some design decisions and began thinking about who he might send the postcards to. This project captures a piece of who they are while celebrating their adventurous spirits and our creative journey together.

Overall it was a really rewarding and fun experience getting to know Graydon and Alan and designing with them. It was so heartwarming hearing Alan talk about how he feels he’s just lived the best life ever so it’s not necessary to say anything else and Graydon seems like he’s lived such a great life to horseback riding with his wife to the beach. It was super fun to have them create the avatars with us to and give space for them to be creative with us. I also just love the quotes they’ve given us. I think it helped speak to their personality and really pull this project together. It feels so much more personalised and like you can get to now these people on a more personal level and get a feel for who they are. I had a really great time designing and interacting with them. Pushing myself as a design to to design only with two colours and just different opacity. It would have been super amazing to be able to meet them in person and give them this boxes in person but they seemed so excited seeing the . avatars they made used somewhere and were even discussing who to send the postcards too which was super lovely.