Reflection: Visualization Tool

Challenge & Selection: I’m a part of the community health awareness committee in my city. We  conduct health awareness campaigns to educate middle-income and low-income strata about various  disease having a high prevalence in that community. Our aim is to provide 3 things: 1) Educate masses  about various disease 2) Eliminate ignorance factor among people about their pain and health  conditions 3) Guide right care through prevention and care centre facilities.    Our biggest challenge lies in explaining the scientific concept of disease or damages caused to the  human body because of lifestyle diseases and habits like smoking, sedentary lifestyle, etc. Since our  target group is devoid of basic human body knowledge, they tend to overlook the damages caused  internally to the body because of many diseases. Our earlier approach was to verbally explain internal  effects like how smoking kills and how it badly affects the lungs of the smoker and reduces their life  span. We realised just by stating the facts verbally it doesn’t help to serve the purpose of community  health building. My choice of selection is Visual Thinking to achieve a common platform for every  layman to understand the disease problem and improve their health.    Application: One such campaign I designed was for spreading awareness on the harmful effects of  smoking. My idea was to represent Smoking Kills campaign as a Dart Game. The Human Lungs picture  are glued to a Dart Board and I created artificial Cigarette Darts. This was developed as a 3D model to  be played by our community people who often engage in smoking. They got 3 chance to play. Basically,  while playing this game, they were throwing cigarette darts into the lungs and puncturing them. This  made them realise how they puncture their own lungs while smoking every cigarette.    Another campaign designed was to fight Dengue in one community area having high cases of dengue.  Similarly, I went ahead with the Visualization technique and conducted Wall Painting campaign in that  community slum area. The painting had a dengue characteristics mosquito in between painted in black  and white. Diagrammatic representation of symptoms, treatment and prevention care was also  drawn. The mentions were given in regional language for easy access and more adaptability of the  masses.    Insight & Approach: I realised how this technique worked wonders for my campaigns. In the Smoking  Kills Campaign, people got a real feel of the harm they were causing with their habits and I could  connect with them with Story-telling of many survivors who gave up smoking and are leading happy  and normal lives. With my Dengue Campaign, the community area with the painting started imbibing  healthy and hygienic habits in their surroundings. They came together as a community and took all  the preventive care of reducing the number of dengue cases. The wall painting reminded them about  they could achieve their goals in unity and lead a healthy life. The feedback recorded saw various  measures in place to curb the mosquito growth and behavioural change among the community people  leading to healthy practices.    I always thrived to work for the betterment of the community and to bring good health and smile on  everyone’s face. Design Thinking for Innovation course made me self-aware about the biases I made  during my service by just giving speeches to the audience about good health and no practical and  ground approach for the same cause. Using the Design Thinking tools like Visualization and Story- telling, I managed to empathise with the masses about their lack of knowledge and understanding of  the human body and functions. I could then define problem statement clearly and ideate more  practical and easier to comprehend campaigns and test them in the community areas. The most  important factor is feedback here, more feedback led to more clear problem statements. I will  continue using this methodology in my campaigns and improve my approach further. Thank You.

