Week 1

After nearly 6 months away from University work this week we finally started FOURTH year! New year, new studio, new mind set, new goals. I was excited to get started on my honours project and to get the ball rolling for what is set to be the biggest year yet!

Over the summer I gave this years project a great deal of thought, but this week I was driven to pick a topic and strive with forward thinking to generate ideas of what direction I wanted to steer my final outcome in. I began jotting ideas down of what I could potentially base my entire project on. I thought the best way to tackle this would be to find a topic that I have experience in as this would give me a good starting point. Below is all of the options that I thought about, but I have decided to do some research into the mental health issue, Pure OCD to see if there is an area to design for.

To start, I spent a substantial amount of time dedicated to researching about the field I was designing for, Pure OCD. When OCD is first mentioned a lot of people will automatically associate it to physical compulsions, the most common being cleanliness. I gained a fair idea of how little this topic is known by the majority, through the lack of online research and books on the subject matter.

The form of OCD that I aim to design around is Pure OCD also known as Pure O. Someone very close to me is living with Pure O and witnessing his daily struggles, it has strived me to base my project on this topic, as I see first hand how it is affecting my cousin and family.

I began this week by looking into the general over sight of OCD, I gained a fair bit of knowledge about the mental impairment from Ali Greymond's book 'Pure O OCD recovery, Pure Obsessional OCD'. Firstly looking into the difference between general OCD and Pure O. Then learning the thought process and how exactly the mind of someone living with Pure OCD's brain works. The first chapter of this book really highlights how the brain reacts when receiving thoughts, as predicted, an OCD brains act differently than how the general brain should work. It is all about mindset and once stuck in an OCD mindset it is extremely difficult to escape from it - This may be an area where I would like to design for.

I also found the social side of OCD attacks an important issue. How the brain avoids taking a person to a situation because they allow the brain to overthink and believe that this situation contains danger - This may become an area to explore.

Reassurance and avoidance were 2 key words within the book, there are 2 types of tricks the OCD brains play on a person

* Avoidance technique - Avoiding a situation in order to reassure yourself that you are safe.

* Reassurance technique - Not avoiding situations but feel the need to reassure themselves after the situation ie. overthinking or making up scenarios that never happened in their head.

The book then went onto explain physical compulsions these include -

*Asking others for their opinions

- happens after hours of trying to figure out the thoughts on their own

- asking once is never enough

*Online research

In most Pure O cases the compulsions are split as

80% analysing

20% physical compulsions

The time spend worrying about the thoughts is the main dominant problem.

I liked the 'burning ball' metaphor that the author used in the book:

After conducting this research I have placed myself at a metaphorical 'junction' there is two interesting routes I could take in this project.

- Create a project which the user is to set personal goals for themselves (take back the power)

- Create a 'log' where users can record real life events and can look back on to reassure them on factual situations.

The plan for next week is:

- Do more research into the recovery progress of Pure OCD

- Speak to someone who is currently diagnosed

- Brainstorm some initial ideas