Can creativity save lives? Enter MADE Design.

Creativity is powerful. It’s the positive force behind some great human achievements. But can it save lives?

Traditionally, cancer patients are not given a role in their own healing.

They’re victims; passengers at the mercy of medicine and fate. What happens to them is totally out of their own control. And feeling powerless doesn’t help you get better.

Enter Cancer Dojo.

The app empowers cancer sufferers to play an active role in their treatments, with the intention of making them more resilient. Research shows that feeling empowered in a debilitating situation has beneficial effects on one’s physical condition. In essence — if you’re happier, you’re healthier.

And if you’re healthier, you’re harder to kill.

Conn Bertish, Cancer Dojo’s founder, is certainly hard to kill. The big wave surfing, Fear Factor winning husband and father was diagnosed with a severe form of brain cancer in 2006.

An acclaimed creative director, he tackled cancer the same way he tackles everything — by staying upbeat and finding a way to win. Against the odds, Conn turned his world into a physical and figurative cancer-beating playground. He’s been cancer free since 2013.

His positivity played a major role in his recovery.

Oncologists and neurologists urged him to share his way of thinking, in the hope of showing other sufferers how they can augment their own treatments and have a better chance of beating cancer too.

Conn distilled his creativity, knowledge and personal experience into Cancer Dojo. The app provides a user-friendly journey that teaches patients how to engage with their treatments, stay motivated, generate their own meditations, learn how to visualise, be more mindful, eat better and laugh more.

All of which makes the patient more positive, happy, healthy and harder to kill.

Conn partnered with MADE to create the app.

We were tasked with developing the user experience, design and delivery of the app to market.

To compliment its intuitive, easy-to-use nature, we developed a fun and friendly illustration style that retains a sense of maturity. With three or four existing characters as a reference, the task was to evolve and improve them while keeping Conn’s vision intact.

The major challenge was to create something approachable and easy to consume without underplaying the seriousness of the disease. Going too cartoony or juvenile simply wasn’t an option.

We took the colour palette and visual direction and made it our own — a softer, more uplifting direction that helps the user find the balance between engaging with their disease without being overwhelmed by it. Easy-to-read fonts were chosen, so that users groggy or drowsy from treatment still find the app accessible.

Armed with the power of design, MADE helped Cancer Dojo evolve into an interactive cancer-crushing tool that’s helping sufferers all over the world.

Their mission to change the way the world views and deals with cancer is both noble and necessary. We’re proud to have played a role in bringing it into the world.

Creativity is powerful enough to save lives.

Visit the Cancer Dojo website and see how: cancerdojo.com.