Consulting with Prof.Kristin Hughes
04/03/17
Kristin Hughes is a Communications Design professor at CMU School of Design and has extensive experience designing for social good, especially in her work with Fitwits. Our team has been thinking about focussing on lower income communities since our preliminary research has shown us that this demographic is the most affected by asthma. As we’ve shifted our concept slightly from a kit that provides the tools to set up activities, to a kit that provides to tools to create a program, we were inspired by a junior communications project Paint the Pavement. In this project, lead by Kristin, designers had to create the send out material that made a very bureaucratic process seem approachable and manageable. We hoped to create something similar for project breathe, but would help community leaders create an after school program that helped with asthma related issues.
After consulting Kristin, she provided us with interesting insights and practical suggestions:
- Some asthma solutions are simpler than you think
In her work with Fitwits, a program to reduce obesity rates in children and improve childhood health habits, her team did a great amount of research in asthma, since obesity and asthma are so closely related. In her research she found that simple behavior habits can greatly reduce the occurrence of asthma triggers. If a parent vacuums the house at 1:00 p.m., just a couple hours before the children come home from school, the children are significantly more likely to have asthma attack, than if the parent vacuums earlier in the morning. If families take off their shoes before entering the home they are also reducing the number of attacks that may get triggered from dust and dirt. It is also important to look at communities whose actions are harming the lower income, such as middle class suburbs that use fertilizers on their lawns release pollutants into the air that are huge triggers for anyone with asthma. - Schools are not a fix-all
A common mistake is to assume that schools have the resources and capabilities to fix any issue related to children. Re-evaluate what a school, or school program is responsible for. Consider taking your service out of the school environment for a more realistic approach. Teachers, school nurses, and after school supervisors are already being stretched thin and given a tremendous amount of responsibility and work. - Partner with a pre-existing program
It is understandable to immediately think of implementing a program into a school setting since there is already the pre-set environment for learning, where all children are guaranteed to be. However there are other programs that will have plenty of children such as camps, youth programs, or scouts, that often already have asthma or health related segments in their program. Pairing with a program will provide the same facilitations as a school, but provides a more logical environment for setting up activities and learning about health. - Narrow the scope
Girl scouts is one of the biggest youth programs in the country, which is an environment built to have girls of all ages learning about practical life skills. It is also already segregated into age groups, provides opportunities for age groups to interact together or work independently, and can easily scale from local to nationwide. Girls from grades 3–5 are also in their developmental stage where they shift from learning from parents to learning from friends. They are also in a stage where they are beginning to learn how to take care of other girls and create strong bonds and relationships. Focussing specifically on one age and one gender can help simplify the scope of the project significantly. Similar programs to girls scouts such as Girls on the Run can also create a time scale, such as a service that only lasts for one week or one month can also help with simplifying the scope of the project. These programs also
After discussing Kristin’s feedback in class as a team we decided to shift our concept. We really enjoyed the idea of partnering with Girl Scouts, and found that there are even some troops that have created an asthma awareness badge after partnering with local hospitals. We also enjoyed the simple DIY style behavioral change actions that can reduce triggers. Our concept became a kit that could be given to girl scouts that contains DIY activities to complete at home with a parent to prevent triggers and learn about asthma in detail. When we presented this concept to Molly she really enjoyed our concept of partnering with Girl Scouts, however warned us that we were approaching a product with a kit, rather than a service.
