We have a crisis that is not addressed properly – several doomsday statistics estimate that 1 in 4 adults will endour a psychological illness of some form during their lifetime. While there aren’t enough medical professionals in Germany and worldwide directly to address this issue combined with mind-blowing flaws in the scientific area of psychology, there are fundamental design principles based on my subjective observations that can be implemented to redesign aspects of how we approach things daily and how a well designed infrastructure can benefit everyone, with better mental health as a byproduct but also an important design parameter.
Instead of looking at the bigger picture of design, that thinks of it as a fundamental aspect of every part living that is not an accident, but the controlled version of the execution of a plan or system designed to address an issue, I would like to look at the smaller scale of the word design with it’s meaning and function inside. When taking the term mental health into the mix it means a healthy way of existing, with a healthy identity and neurological functioning. Design in the smaller scale is expressed by information-conveyance, structure, usability and visuals. Architecture for example as a higher form of design can shape the way an individual behaves, feels, works and lives and can contribute to a better version of mental health, while bad design can even amplify negative personality traits, leading to non-desirable outcomes.
Examples of bad design are everywhere, for example supermarket-checkouts with multiple points that are bad for mental health: It starts with the job of the cashier whose mundane task is the repetitive role to scan the barcode for someone and collect the money. The user of the supermarket-checkout has to first place his things on it, just to grab them back again after. In the meantime he has to frustratingly wait, often times with bad music and other stressed people, so there he is with a selection of tobacco, sweets and alcoholic beverages, all leading to worse health and much more worse psychological outcomes at a grander scale. And this whole dynamic worsens the mood of everyone. Annoyed clients annoy the cashier who in turn doesn’t likes his job and provides a lower-quality experience to the customer, so that’s an never ending cycle of frustration. Now let’s think about the function a supermarket-checkout serves and ways to address this function in a way that also benefits mental health and it would look and feel totally different.
I’ll give you the task to examine other systems like bureaucracy, libraries, public transit and you’ll start to see so many things that worsens our mental health even in the smaller scale, so that when fix them, we are even better equipped to fix our societal issues at a larger scale, which I will address in an upcoming post as well a list of example concepts, how I would design a supermarket-checkout instead!
