Week19: Outcome II
2020-3-9/ Cloud
Example
According to John's feedback, we added some references. We were inspired by an example from a school in the United States. Teachers at one West Baltimore school send disruptive students to a meditation room. At this school, one student was teased by another, and the argument turned into pushing and swearing. But instead of detaining him or leaving him in the principal's office, his teacher sent him to a meditation room at Robert w. Coleman elementary school.
"I took a deep breath, had some snacks, and then I was together," the boy recalled. "Then I apologized to the class." He is one of many kids who are lost in what west Baltimore elementary school calls the "Mindful Moment Room," a warm, bright space filled with purple floor pillows, yoga MATS, and essential oils.
The children here stretch, do yoga and practice deep breathing. More importantly, employees say, they have built an ability to stay calm.
'when I'm angry about something or someone, I take a deep breath, continue to do my job and channel everyone's energy,' says Dacari Crawford, 9. It gives you a lot of confidence when you need to do something important."
Through this example, we consulted a lot of news and books about children's psychological problems, and the data we got made us very surprised:
8x more likely to become involved in crime.
25% avoid school.
18x more likely to be excluded.
75% of mental health issues start in childhood.
53 days for child to enter treatment (NHS)
2/3 of councils have cut funding (2015)
10% of mental health funding goes to children
A CHILD’S MENTAL HEALTH IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS THEIR PHYSICAL HEALTH AND DESERVES THE SAME QUALITY OF SUPPORT!
From these data, we know that children's mental health problems are also in urgent need of attention and help. So we wanted to provide a safe space for children to tell their stories. We put the setting of this space in the school. Because in school, some students have social phobia, so it is difficult to integrate into the group and make friends with their classmates. Some students are so angry that they will not control their emotions when they are angry, so they will do harm to others and other similar behaviors. The inspiration we got from that school in the United States is to design a room in which the environment and equipment can help students in need to adjust their breathing so as to help them calm down.
My first idea is to design a cartoon character image, and then in this room, cartoon characters can lead children to do fitness or deep breathing (through the form of animation) or the cartoon character to dialogue with the children and you can talk to it, it is a can listen to your troubles and keep the secret for you friend.
So I thought about the rate of breathing. How to visualize the rate of breathing in this video. I thought of using the circle as the central element. Because the circle is softer than the other shapes, and because the breathing is accompanied by the heartbeat, the circle is more like the shape of a heart.
The first video I did was with a blue background because blue is a quiet color. But our team members thought we could add different color concepts to the video. Because through their literature research, different colored environments can help children to produce different feelings. According to our design requirements, we decided to use green, blue, purple and yellow to design this video. Now we can only change the color of this space by changing the color of the video. If there is an opportunity in the future, we hope to further complete our idea.
And I made a device called a breathing ball and put it in this room. Because I hope the children can interact with this space, and at the same time, they can transfer their bad emotions. I used the principle of up and down airflow. When we pull the breathing ball up and down, the blades of the breathing ball will float regularly. This is also a way to assist the children to breathe in the room. The children can interact with the breathing ball, and they can also watch the breathing ball in the video to do breathing exercises and adjust their mood.
Presentation
This is how our room ends up. With a combination of lights installation, music and meditation, we tried to create this calm, quiet, personal atmosphere to let kids to relax and have a time out of the busy noisy school.
（The first half of the video is a test version of the first stage jellyfish, and the second half is the final video）
For this idea, I first tried to draw a cartoon style scene. But it didn't work as well as expected. Because if you want to be really smooth it means you have to draw a lot of pictures. But the time we have left is not enough to allow us to do so much work.So we tried to change the video style and use the breathing element to make a video that could help the children breathe.
