Fretto explains in his introduction the motivation for the Toolkit and his participatory methods came from his previous work:

“Helping people in need was always my intention, but in the end, I questioned whether my interventions were truly helping or just making a complicated situation more complicated. Participation in design appealed to me because it included something that was missing before—the voices of those whom my design intentions would ultimately impact.
…The general idea was to introduce participants to the fundamentals of graphic design and assist them in developing real-world design campaigns that addressed an issue they each cared about.”

But he also openly acknowledges the workshop ‘… wasn’t squeaky clean’, stating ‘… This Toolkit is far from perfect; it certainly doesn’t provide all of the answers…’ But the Toolkit is really quite thought provoking, in part because the honest tone throughout the text invites you to ask questions about this project and participatory design work in general. As a student project we can look at this in context of an exploration of ideas.

Structure and Content
The Toolkit is structured in two major sections. Getting Ready takes the reader through planning the project, which covers topics like setting expectations and logistical concerns such as resources and
recruitment. Putting it into Action takes the reader through the execution of a project, with topics like launching the project, building skills and dealing with setbacks. Fretto delivers this with straightforward practical advice, interspersed with anecdotes from his experiences during the workshop.

One of the strengths of the Toolkit is its frank honesty. For example, one pull out reads:

Don’t Ask “Leading Questions”
On the first day of my workshop I had a great discussion with high school-aged participants around the question, “what makes design good or poor?” There were colorful responses and many different perspectives discussed but one student in particular made a great point. He implied that design is poor when it doesn’t deliver what is promised, as in a vacuum cleaner that boasts of durability but then breaks days after you buy it… I wanted to prod deeper, bringing the issue to the surface. But in doing so, I was asking leading questions. I forced the discussion in one direction in efforts to illuminate the point that was almost made earlier. One of the oldest participants was on to me. He asked, out of frustration, “Do you just want us to say that design can be dishonest? Because it just feels like all you’re trying to do is get us to say that!” Bold! I moved on confident, but was embarrassed. I realized that while trying to remain neutral, I simply pushed too hard for the point. Looking back on it now, I probably should have spoken up and made the point myself.

The general tone of the guide is friendly, open and casual, inviting you into Fretto’s process:

Something won’t go as planned; accept this fact! The workshop will likely encounter some bumps in the road no matter what—and working with human beings sometimes gets messy. Some of these bumps are unavoidable, but others can sidestepped— especially this early in the planning stage.

There is plenty of practical advice too, based on Fretto’s project experience:

TIPS: HELP! My Participants Are Not Talking!
Consider trying “Think/Pair/Share,” a technique that makes it easier for participants to speak up in a group setting. First, bring up an idea that you’d like the group to think about individually. Then ask them to pair up with a partner and share their responses with each other. Finally, one of them will present their collective responses to the group. This method yields productive discussions, especially if you have shy participants.

Participatory Design and Visual Design:

I have worked for organisations in the past which use participatory methods, specifically within photography. Reading through Design for Us got me thinking back to this work and some of the issues that came up then which are as relevant to graphic design as they are for photography.

Beyond many of the interesting points Fretto brings up directly, there were a number of questions the Toolkit raises for me. Questions, I feel, we perhaps need to ask more explicitly and answer honestly before delivering participatory projects for social impact:

1. Why these people? Why these issues? Why us?
What is our own motivation for working with a group of people or for a certain cause? Am I really the right person for the job?
Asking this question can help us understand what we can actually do, the impact we can realistically have and where our unique skills are best placed and matched. It can also lead us to understand who we need to work with in order to really have the impact we want.
Put simply, being honest about our own motivations can help us understand our potential to effect change.
For the participants Fretto advocates a Circle of Influence exercise, whereby the participants plot issues they’re interested in based on a scale of being close to them or affecting them personally, to issues affecting the whole world. This helps them find an issue that is meaningful to them and which they can affect. The same process can be applied by the designer/facilitator themselves.

2. How sustainable is the project in the long term?
If it’s difficult to fund a project, what does that tell you about the possibility for the project to be taken forward after your involvement? If it’s a project for the community, how feasible is it to be self sustaining, without your involvement after a certain stage? If it’s a single project that happens just this once, what is the desired impact in the short term and will people be left with faith in the next practitioner who comes along to effect change in their community?

3. Whose goals matter?
If you discover your goals differ from your partners it’s time to re-evaluate why you are doing the project and who you’re hoping to serve. When you get partners involved in a project they have to be real partners—equal and respected. They might not work with design but in designing for social impact, ‘design’ is but one part of the process.

4. What are your expectations of the project and what are the participants expectations? Who created those expectations?
This is about looking inwards. Understanding what the potential really is, and what the limitations are. We need to be realistic about what a design project can achieve. It could be a lot, it could be very subtle. Claiming too much of the potential of a project at the start raises expectations and makes achieving anything meaningful very difficult.
This is also where, as designers, we can honestly contribute by articulating just how much impact design can have—and the conditions that need to be there make that change. Visual communication for change doesn’t happen in a silo and the mechanisms needed to support it should also be communicated.

5. Along with the means to express themselves have we helped participants understand how their work might be interpreted by their audience?
Understanding our audiences and how people ‘read’ images and text, is as much part of our skills as designers as having the technical ability to make something aesthetically or conceptually powerful. This understanding also needs to be passed on so that participants are aware how their work could be perceived.

Sometimes it is hard to ask these questions during a project because ultimately the answers might reveal uncomfortable truths, or highlight flaws in our work. Perhaps it might reveal that the project is too short or promises more than it can deliver. It’s for exactly these reasons we have to ask the questions.

Fretto’s efforts offer a great starting point. Such documentation and reflection push us all to think more deeply about our own work and methods and, going forward, help us develop more meaningful and considered projects.

Images courtesy Mike Fretto

Screenshots from The Okay News

A simple, yet delightfully compelling idea, Rebecca Ross’ Okay News project is an attempt to shake us out of this stupor with which we read the news. The app (though it was created long before that word was in common use) sits in the background of everyday computer use, with only one form of interface or interaction: An OS dialog box that pops up every few minutes with a headline from the New York Times. To continue using the computer, the user must click “OK”, a way of calling attention to the approval inherent in not getting involved with the things he or she is reading about.

Apart from changing the way a user interacts with their daily news, the project, completed in 2003, was also a response to the (at the time) growing consciousness of the computer as a portal that connects you to people and events across the world.

Asked how she first though of the idea for the project, Rebecca writes:

I am originally from New York. Typical New Yorkers like to relax in the morning with the New York Times and a bagel (preferably an everything bagel with lox and cream cheese) and coffee. In many ways, the design of the New York Times is irrecoverably fused with this aspect of New York Culture. You see the paper and even though it is detailing really intense things happening around the world, somehow you unwind with it and possibly even pat yourself on the back for being engaged with the events of the world because you’re reading the paper even though all you did was eat a bagel in response.

With the Okay News, I wanted to try and shake people out of this condition by presenting them with headlines in another form. I had originally wanted to distribute it as a virus but did not know how to do this technically. So this whole experience relied on individual masochism because if you installed the software and then didn’t okay the headline that came up on the screen, you could not go back to whatever you were doing before it popped up.

All images courtesy Rebecca Ross. http://rebeccaross.net

Facilitated by a community of academics, health carers, authors and artists, the site is a rich resource that provides multiple forms of engagement for different audiences—from people engaged in popularising the role comics can play in medicine to medical practitioners, patients and carers.

Dr Ian Williams, who coined the term ‘Graphic Medicine’ and founded the website, writes on the site, “Thanks in part to the medical humanities movement many medical schools will now have tutors suggesting students read classic literature or modern novels to gain insight into the human condition. I think it is high time that graphic fiction was taken as seriously: comics and graphic novels could be used as a resource for health professionals, playing a valuable role in:
• Reflecting or changing cultural perceptions of medicine
• Relating the subjective patient/carer/provider experience
• Enabling discussion of difficult subjects
• Helping other sufferers or carers”

From Iggy and The Inhalers, by Alex Thomas, MD, to teach kids with asthma about asthma symptoms, treatment and medication.

This isn’t to say that Graphic Medicine only resonates with those somehow connected to the medical field or comic books. Amongst the diverse comics featured or reviewed, there is a loose unification under medical and healthcare themes, making them mostly accessible for anyone to read. They deal with a range of issues, such as coping with a family member’s diagnosis of an illness, postpartum depression and the experience of donating an organ.

Left: Epileptic by David Beauchard. Right: Wrinkles by Paco Roca, a graphic novel about Alzheimer’s disease.

Reading about the project is interesting, but you’re instilled with a much stronger conviction for the case of comics in medicine by actually reading some of them. The narratives expectedly deal with difficult and harrowing themes. They draw you in and give you a greater understanding of and insight into a situation. And while there still exists a fallacy of comic books needing to be ‘comical’ (or dealing with lighter topics), in actual fact their power lies in leveraging image and text deftly to communicate to a wide audience. Graphic Medicine as a platform provides the space needed to explore the role of comics within healthcare.

Some of the comics can be read online. Look Straight Ahead by Elaine Will is about a teenager dealing with depression and bipolar disorder.

From Chapter 4 of Look Straight Ahead by Elaine Will.

Mom’s Cancer , published online twice a week, is written by Brian Fies, and is an account of his mother’s battle with metastatic lung cancer.

Mom’s Cancer by Brian Fies.

The resources available on the site are varied and allow you explore different facets of Graphic Medicine.

Comic Reviews and Editor’s Picks point you to different comics. A Graphic Medicine podcast is available through iTunes. You can submit a comic or become a guest author on the site, which helps adding new voices to the discussion. The Facebook page is active and frequently updated with news. Annually, Graphic Medicine also hosts a ‘Comics and Medicine’ conference—this year, the theme for the conference is Spaces of Care, and will be hosted from 16 – 18 July 2015 at the University of California, Riverside.

Poster for the upcoming conference on Comics and Medicine, themed Spaces of Care

External links and resources on the site encourage you to explore medical humanities, artists and authors, and other comic sites further

An eponymously titled book series, published by Penn State Press is available for purchase online. Currently, there are 2 books in the series, The Bad Doctor and The Graphic Medicine Manifesto.

The two books within the series on Graphic Medicine: The Bad Doctor (left) and the Graphic Medicine Manifesto (right).

From the website:
“Curated by an editorial collective with scholarly, creative, and clinical expertise, the series is inspired by a growing awareness of the value of comics as an important resource for communicating about a range of issues broadly termed “medical.” For medical practitioners, patients, and families and caregivers dealing with illness and disability, graphic narrative enlightens complicated or difficult experiences. For scholars in literary, cultural, and comics studies, the genre articulates a complex and powerful analysis of illness, medicine, and disability and a rethinking of the boundaries of “health.” The series will be diverse in its approach. It will include monographic studies and edited collections from scholars, practitioners, and medical educators, as well as original comics from artists and non-artists alike, such as self-reflective “graphic pathographies” or comics used in medical training and education, providing a creative way to learn and teach.”

By using visuals, comics have the ability to directly immerse a reader in a specific context. Effectively harnessing visuals enable readers to develop a rich and layered comprehension of narratives, rapidly increasing the ability to connect with the scenario. The effectiveness of comics also lies in the ability of visuals to have a high recall value.

All images from Graphic Medicine / respective authors and artists, as indicated.

Thoughtshop Foundation is a Social Communication Organisation. It is dedicated to creating new and effective ways of dealing with social issues, with the aim to educate, motivate and initiate change. Thoughtshop Foundation is headed by Himalini Varma and Satayan Sengupta.

Children discuss cards from a Thoughtshop Toolkit.

How does one ‘teach’ a nine year old who has already survived some of life’s harshest lessons?
How does one take sessions on sex education in a village community with young girls who have never been to school?
How does one train non-literate women in business management skills, or talk about ending domestic violence with groups of men and women who believe it’s a normal way of life?

These are just some of the questions we have had to ask ourselves, and our journey to find answers have spanned two decades of work with grass-root communities, across different corners of India and several other developing countries. The discoveries along the way have helped us build a philosophy and understand the nature of communications in a context where the written word is not recognised, and the issues to be raised are often considered taboo.

At its simplest, Communication Design for the social sector can be intended to provide information, or raise awareness. Sometimes, it aims to create behavioural change. But the real magic happens when communication design sparks off a dialogue that leads to a process of self reflection, empowerment and transformation, for an individual and a society.

Communicating rice cultivation, from seed to crop, in Jharkhand.

Lessons from Street Kids
One of our first experiences with working children on the streets of Delhi taught us that the communication process had to be learner centred – a ‘partnership’ – we had as much to learn from the children as we had to offer them. For these children (shoe shine boys, coolies and rag pickers), the street was their classroom, and life on the street was their living school; teaching them harsh, new lessons everyday. At the age of nine and ten years, they led independent adult lives and had already seen a great deal. They would not attend a mainstream school and they were not interested in alphabet books talking of apples and balls. Sessions would take place on the pavements, and children would rush off the moment they saw a potential customer who needed his shoes polished.

Life on the street had made them hide away their vulnerabilities and we needed ways to build trust and get beneath the hardened exterior, find the little child inside. We needed to find a way to excite and connect with the children; help them share their personal stories, learn from them and move ahead. The idea was to appear like a magician before the kids with a bag full of tricks to capture their hearts and minds. After spending many weeks with the children, we developed a kit of games for them. One of the tools, for example, was a set of 36 brightly coloured picture cards; a series of images that captured different moments, emotions, choices and milestones in the children’s’ life.

When asked direct questions about their life, children would withdraw. Yet when playing with the picture cards they would open up. They would pick out cards with situations that they had experienced, and the stories they wove around them were real experiences. This would form an important foundation for further interactions with them. The cards would also serve as a tool to help the children express their feelings, and aspirations. Many cards were open – ended and could be interpreted in different ways.

One card for example had a picture of a boy sitting, looking thoughtful, and a little sad. ‘This boy is sad because he has just lost his shoeshine box and he is wondering what to do now. Since someone stole his box, should he steal someone else’s?’ Asked one. Another kid pulled out a card of a policeman hauling up a child: ‘If he steals a shoe box, then this is what will happen, and he will still be unhappy’. Another child pitched in: ‘I think the boy is sad because he is new and has no friends’, to which the other children agreed and shared how vulnerable a child feels when he is new and alone in the big city. And so, cards helped us learn about what was going on in the children’s minds. Actions and their consequences, social problems relevant to the children’s lives could now be addressed.

During the weeks we spent with the children we discovered that many of them were crazy about Bollywood films. They collected and traded pictures of famous stars. Inspired by this we developed a set of playing cards teaching the alphabet using film stars and famous personalities. So instead of learning A for Apple the children would learn A is for Amitabh (Bachhan)…

Family Spacing Board Game. Part of the Shankar Kit which addresses adolescent boys and young men.

Taboo!
It was 1996. We were travelling to a village group in South 24 Paragnas, West Bengal accompanied by Banidi, an elderly health worker with 21 years experience of working with communities. She complained to us about her latest predicament. She had been instructed to take sessions on reproductive health with girls – adolescents – young enough to be her granddaughters. She fished out a crumpled sheet of paper from a tin trunk, on which was typed a list of topics that she was expected to educate the girls on: Puberty, Menstruation, Conception, Sex Determination, Family Planning. She admitted to us that she had somehow never got around to discussing these issues with girls; it never felt like the right time she said. When we nodded in empathy, she confided how she felt this new requirement was quite unnecessary. She had always gone beyond the call of duty, but said she also had her self respect to consider. ‘What would the village elders think? Talking about sex to teenaged girls in a village’!!

Soon the young girls poured into the room, some looked as young as 12 years old, others may have been as old as 16. Most of these girls cannot read. They have never been to school or have dropped out so long ago that they remembered nothing. ‘How will they ever understand all this technical reproductive health stuff’! Banidi muttered to us under her breath. Later, when we asked the girls if they knew about how their body worked – about body systems – they looked completely blank. One of the girls mentioned that periodically a doctor visited their village and would give a lecture on such things. But they never really understood what she said and were too scared to ask. Marriage, children and motherhood, however, were round the corner; a reality that most of these girls would face most likely before their 18th birthday.

The Champa kit, a teaching aid for health workers disseminating information on reproductive health to rural adolescent girls.

The year long interactive development process resulted in the creation of a graded 5 module educational package of stories, games and models to discuss reproductive health with adolescent girls. Through the story of 12 year old Champa and her friends, different issues around reproductive health were raised. These stories were illustrated using lucid water colour paintings that were widely understood, and allowed the girls to let their imaginations flow. To break the ice and bridge the facilitator-learner divide, a card game showing social situations was introduced where the girls played as teams and challenged, argued and convinced each other on how different social situations influenced their lives. Games and models were developed to reduce the inhibitions around biological concepts of menstruation, conception, sex determination and the use of contraceptives. Games and activities were also devised to build life skills like assertiveness and negotiation.

Illustration from Champa’s discovery, Why does menstruation happen?, a flipchart from the Champa Kit.

Over the last 19 years the kit has been adapted in various languages and used by peer educators across the country to discuss reproductive health in a way that was non-threatening and fun! The interactive process enabled barefoot facilitators or peer educators (marginalised girls from the community) to replace resource persons as they started conducting free and open sessions to discuss sensitive issues. Young girls could freely share their questions with these didis who were most often just like them.

Now multiply that by a Million!
In 2006 we were lucky to be involved in a South Asia wide campaign to end violence against women. It was an ambitious campaign reaching out to 5 million individuals over 6 years and across 6 countries inspiring them to become change makers. Our role involved creating campaign communication, and youth change-makers in West Bengal.

The audience was diverse in every way. In India alone there were 13 states using over 8 languages. The campaign communication was driven by a set of guiding principles: Communication would be positive and inspiring, encourage personal change, be non- judgmental and challenge stereotypes, enable dialogue and be rights- based. And of course they would have to be pictorial and interactive. Through an intense process that covered several years, many participatory workshops and lots of help from partner organisations, we worked to develop a common pictorial language around the issue of gender and violence against women. This new language would have to cut across region, class, age and language barriers, not only within India, but across the campaign countries.

Character illustrations from the Understanding Gender and Violence against Women Toolkit.

One of the thumb rules of creating an image was this – the viewer must be able to imagine himself or herself as being the character in the image. This simple but very effective technique helped us maintain the dignity of characters, and therefore connect with men and women. It was interesting to hear people point out to images and say ‘I feel I am that man. I used to abuse my wife. I never thought it hurt her. I feel it now, I need to make a change’. The focus was on change – encouraging every individual to commit to even a small change; to believe that small efforts lead to big changes. There was also a continuous effort to find techniques that would challenge people’s beliefs, make them rethink attitudes that had been accepted without question for generations.

Here’s an example of an activity that elicited an interesting and familiar pattern of responses:
We would first show an image, of a woman doing the cooking and managing kids and her husband relaxing in the background, smoking a cigarette. People would respond casually saying that this is normal, this is how it is, how it has always been. Then we would show the same picture with the man doing the cooking and managing kids, while the wife is shown relaxing in the background smoking. At this, people would get startled. They would laugh nervously. “There must be some mistake. This is absurd…What a selfish woman!” And thus a raging discussion would begin.

New images and new scenarios were created to help people envision new realities where men shared housework, where women participated in decision- making. Many years later when an intensive impact assessment process was conducted and people were asked what they recalled, they would share powerful personal changes they have made in their life. They would often refer to the workshops as a series of images, which brought home to us the power of images to infuse into people’s consciousness.

One woman recalled the images of a woman eating less, being married early – ‘Those felt like pictures from my life…I wondered how the facilitators knew…Till then it never occurred to me this could change’!
At another interview, a father regretted that he had made a terrible mistake by forcing his under-age daughter to marry against her will. He would not repeat the same mistake with his younger girl. She would have the same freedom as Meenu, one of the characters in the communications.

The We Can Campaign to End Violence Against Women, with its focus on personal change and positive approach has now spread to 15 countries across the world, though the guiding principles remain the same. We have been privileged to work with teams from these other regions, to help them adapt the campaign strategy to their contexts.

Take-home picture and activity booklet for the participants of the My Childhood My Rights workshops.

Communication is Community Building
In our journey over these last two decades, our work has expanded to cover a wide range of issues: from self-exploration, exploring multiple identities, to child rights, water and sanitation, to poor women’s economic leadership and strategies for emergency relief. The solutions range from games and models to films, audio tools and multimedia. Training of trainers, especially grass-root facilitators or peer educators are integral processes. More recently our work could be better described as programme design: Creating sustainable, replicable models for development. Over the last few years, on our own initiative we have been creating community based youth leaders who do a journey from self to society, build youth groups and initiate positive social change within their communities.

It has been an amazing ride, as we have discovered the synergy between development communications and community building. Effective communication improves the quality of life and relationships between people. It increases empathy, reduces judgment and the barriers of misunderstanding that separate us from each other.

More information and materials for use are available at Thoughtshop Foundation’s website, facebook page and on twitter.

All images courtesy Thoughtshop Foundation

Lakshmi Murthy, founder of Vikalp Design, has been working with the rural population in Rajasthan & Gujarat for over 20 years as a communication designer, to develop an effective framework for communication. And in doing so, she has uncovered a way of seeing, and consequently a new way of conversing with her audiences. Below is a short excerpt from an interview with her in Dekho—Conversations on Design in India.

“In distinguishing between the urban and the rural audience, the latter is wrongfully regarded as visually illiterate. The rural audience has a sharper perception of their environment and are keener to infer from indexical traces that the urban individual would neglect. In fact it is the city-bred individual who may be ‘illiterate’ in the rural environment, lacking their visual knowledge. While an urban designer will draw in proportion and orientation of what they see as ‘known’, a villager would rely on vernacular knowledge to draw, displaying a keen unlettered intelligence.

Urban designers need to re-examine their role in communication when working with non-literate and rural groups. They need to assume the role of a facilitator and act as a catalyst in encouraging people’s own visual expression, finding a common visual language and producing visuals that are responsive to the needs of the audience.

A participatory process of self-expression holds one answer. Encouraging people to draw has been looked upon as an empowering process that leads to inclusion of notions otherwise difficult to express.”

Image from Vikalp’s Rural Pictorial Gallery. Drawn by people in rural areas of Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh, and collected by Vikalp since 1992.

In the above excerpt, Lakshmi puts forth a new role of the communication designer when working in a new social and cultural environment. She proposes a shift, from creator to a facilitator—wherein the process of design seeks to leverage existing knowledge and language—gently questioning and guiding and eventually co-creating a solution. The process brings one of the key principles of design—empathy into action, and goes beyond merely sensitising a designer to enabling him/her with the building blocks of a design intervention. The other key benefit of this process can be the emergence of a natural ownership. World-over, well meaning design interventions often break down with users/communities not being able to sustain a connection with it (design intervention). But this new way of building together, breaks down barriers and roots the foundation of an idea in the user community.

Image from Vikalp’s Rural Pictorial Gallery.

Learn more about Vikalp and their work, here.

Dekho image, courtesy Codesign.  Illustrations courtesy Vikalp.

As an audio-visual ‘job-aid’ for community health workers in rural India, Mobile Kunji supports interpersonal communication and helps provide standardised, credible information.

Mobile Kunji is an audio-visual job aid for community health workers working in maternal care in rural India. Created by Anaya and BBC Media Action so far the project has been launched in Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh. A deck of 40 cards go, quite literally, hand-in-hand with pre-recorded audio clips accessible from a basic mobile phone. The cards contain information on the crucial early stages of pre and post-natal health care, breaking down a vast subject into eight important behaviours and over 100 points which encourage attitude change.

Each point is visualised as an illustration on the front of the card above a mobile shortcode. Dialing this code takes the health worker through to an audio recording of Dr Anita or her assistant, the authority figures created to to convey short messages of important information to the families. These authority figures were created to build trust in the families who often lack access to larger professional health care institutions. In Bihar, for example, the ratio of doctors to patients is 1:3,500 (the national average in 2013 was 1:1,700). On the back of the card the key content is summarised along with a lightly written couplet also repeated in the accompanying recording.

People, earlier, might even say to me – we don’t believe you; you are doing this just to earn money… but, now when I visit families along with my Mobile Kunji, they pull out chairs, invite me to sit, and gather around me.
—Anganwadi Worker, Manju Mehta

The cards act as both a ‘job aid’, supporting health workers to provide standardised, credible information and increasing their confidence, whilst also helping to build the trust of the families they visit.

The project addresses both practical and more systematic problems the health workers face. The need for something that could be carried easily on home visits, for example, alongside the need for a substantial amount of accurate and standardised information, and the the need for a tool which values and empowers the health worker role rather than replaces it.

The strength of the visual material is how it subtly facilities both the verbal communication of the healthcare worker and communicates the content of the card. The single steel ring binding means that each card can be read by both the families and health worker simultaneously.

The cards are colour-coded so that the 40 sheets are easily navigable for health workers who typically spend on average 10–15 minutes on a visit. Since the whole deck is compact – no bigger than a large smartphone – it fits easily in a handbag, making it more likely that it will be used on home visits.

Like the voice of Dr Anita, the aesthetic of the cards is open and unintimidating, helped by the bold spectrum of colours which are not trend-based or too somber, nor the typical go-to colours of the healthcare industry.

But why have a visual element at all? The cards help clarify what is being said and heard, helping the audience to visualise the message as tangible scenarios. Coupled with the recordings, the aid is flexible for the health worker and acknowledges that communication styles should and will differ depending on the person delivering the message, and of course the recipient.

Mobile Kunji demonstrates a well-executed process of understanding a need and addressing it with considered form and function, a strong example of how a piece of visual communication can support and enhance interpersonal communication, not replace it.

Images courtesy of Codesign and BBC Media Action.

Design to Improve Life Education from INDEX: Design to Improve Life® on Vimeo.

The Compass offers interesting methods, processes and filters which educators and students in design schools (irrespective of their geographical location and age), can incorporate in their work, especially in projects concerning social, economic & environmental sustainability. While it is relevant for both teachers and students, the Compass needs careful study and some level of experience to understand how all or parts of it can be customised or adapted for different projects for social impact.

The Compass is structured with the user as the central point of focus, always reminding and anchoring activities through a user-centric lens. Four sequential phases of Prepare, Perceive, Prototype and Produce present distinct parts of the creative process. Each phase contains suggested actions, which further contain multiple ways each of implementation. A detailed overview of objectives, approach, plan, right down to time allotment for activities at every level, clarifies the utility and execution. A ‘Sum Up’ action at the end of each phase, provides an important pause in the process, for reflection and better awareness before moving on to the next stage of idea development.The Compass also brings rigour to the overall process, by suggesting a 3-pronged evaluation criteria—Form, Impact and Context.

For me one for the most valuable features in the entire model was the idea of Jokers. Described as ‘positive interruptions that can change design teams’ mindsets, make them change their course of direction and see new possibilities’ Jokers offers activities and processes that can tackle the inertia or heady rushes in the creative process. Despite the best of intentions and dedication, creative processes for design students (and anybody else for that matter) can often hit the wall with extremes of narrow focus or lack of focus. The idea of Jokers calls out that gap, and provides suggestions for it.

The Compass may have been designed keeping in mind school children. But don’t let that throw you off. In the ideas it offers on navigating the creative process and validating your ideas, it can be helpful, especially if you are designing (or mentoring) to improve life. Check it out here.

All images courtesy INDEX Design To Improve Life.

One of the critical areas of reform in the legal system, is the awareness of rights and laws by the general populace. While there are laws and systems in place, the average citizen is often unaware of their presence, their relevance and when/how to access them. Recognising this as a key failing, lawyers Kanan and Kelly Dhru from Research Foundation for Governance in India (RFGI), embarked on their idea of creating a graphic story format to educate children about laws in India. Lawtoons is a comic book series on laws in India, and following a successful crowd-funding campaign the first book in the series is now out.

“The useful information about citizenship, democracy, laws and rights that children learn in their schools through the civics curriculum is often passed off as ‘dull and boring’. Even upon growing up, an individual is likely to be intimidated by the bulky law books full of legal jargons. This unfortunately, results in a society where most people find it difficult to relate to the idea of laws and legal systems, and feel disconnected.”
—From the Lawtoons website

The first Lawtoons prototype book was designed and tested with children in two public and three private schools in Ahmedabad. Apart from Kanan and Kelly Dhru, creative inputs on the project have been so far provided by designer & illustrator Anish Daolagupu and mentors like Margie Sastry (writer and former associate editor at Amar Chitra Katha) and Sekhar Mukherjee (head of animation film design at the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad). With their recent funding, Lawtoons hopes to engage more designers and create subsequent books under the series.

You can buy the first Lawtoons book, called ‘A Song for Everyone’ on Right to Equality & Freedom of Speech, here.

Images courtesy, Lawtoons.

If you are interested in working with sustainability and want to learn more about it, here’s a well designed resource to understand how related concepts have evolved. The book—The History of Sustainability, was commissioned by Wipro, with the Bangalore-based design practice Trapeze undertaking the content research, writing and design.

While there are several sources to learn about the development of sustainability both online and offline, this resource in particular, with its synergy between content and design, is an engaging and easy read for all.

Talking of the communication intent behind the book, Sarita Sundar (Partner, Trapeze) says, “Our aim was to make the content accessible to a range of readers – who had only a peripheral knowledge/interest in the subject , and to provide enough inputs and leads for someone who wants to know more. We wanted to minimise heavy reading for the  lazy reader and keep the visuals strong.”

An example of how the intent was realised was the creation of broad sections to aid navigation through varied content. Supporting content pieces like the ‘Side Bars’ and ‘Sustainability Speak’, helped create smaller pockets of information, within the larger narrative.

The book can be viewed and downloaded for free, here.

Project Credits
Design:  Trapeze, Sarita Sundar,
Illustrations: Georgie Paul Zachariah, Shreyas Krishnan
Content Research and Writing : Trapeze, Sarita Sundar, and Words etc. by Ruchika Channana

Images courtesy Trapeze

Oodles of Doodles

The first book created by Art for Heart was Oodles of Doodles in 2002, which was made for children above the age of 6, dealing with illness and life in hospitals. It develops in them the skill to give voice to their fears, provides them with a sense of control and a safe avenue for expression. Authored by Steffanie Lorig (Executive Director of Art with Heart), Oodles of Doodles incorporates the work of 97 illustrators and over 20,000 copies of the book were distributed in three years.

Draw It Out

Their latest interactive book, Draw It Out, supports children who are affected by overwhelming feelings of grief or loss due to the death of a loved one or of a classmate, broken family situations, or serious illness. It was developed with the inputs of 27 experts in the fields of counselling, social work and art therapy amongst other fields. The book is meant to serve as an outlet for complex emotions which can not easily be communicated, which can then be used as a foundation for positive conversations. According to Art with Heart, the book helps children articulate and navigate complex emotions and ask questions they may be afraid to ask, reveal perceptions or misconceptions about their situation, identify their support systems and process loss and increase coping skills.

Proceeds from book sales support outreach to high-risk children and teens. Overwhelming testimonials to the efficacy of the books can be seen as an indication of the commitment to and quality of the work. To view more of their work and causes, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook.

Images courtesy Art with Heart.