We consume multiple things everyday, from media to food to clothing, but do these habits have a deeper meaning?
After Kristin tracked her consumption for 2 weeks she noticed multiple patterns. After sorting through her consumption, she realized that she was consuming the same things over and over again. She realized that this was a common coping mechanism for people with anxiety.
She expanded this idea into creating a system that was meant to help people. She wanted to help people learn about anxiety coping mechanisms and which ones work for them. The kit features 3 levels of cards—low level, mid level and high level anxiety. It also includes sticker versions of the cards and a reflection journal.
Process︎︎︎
Collection
The first step Kristin took was tracking all of the things she consumed every day. This is just a snapshot of the collecting she did. She focused on the food, products and media she consumed. After tracking these things, she started sorting by different categories such as time of day, length of activity and more. The one that stuck out to her the most was new vs used/not new. She noticed a trend within the media she consumed and came to the conclusion that she did not consume new things as a way to cope with anxiety.
Concepts & Research
The next step was to start thinking of a concept and to conduct research. Kristin wrote a brief describing her desire to provide different coping mechanisms and to help people learn about themselves. She put out a survey asking people about their level of anxiety on a typical day and did other secondary research. After this she began brainstorming different concepts/ideas for what she could create. She ended up combining multiple ideas into one kit idea.
Sketching
After figuring out what she wanted to make and what information she wanted to provide in the kit she started sketching and designing the kit. She wanted to create a system that was easy to understand and represented the levels of anxiety. She also based the number of cards for each level by applying the information she received from the survey she did earlier. Cards were chosen because feeling something physical tends to ground a person when they are in a panicked state. She made sure to provide a way for people to reflect on how well the coping mechanism worked and just what triggered the person. Correlating stickers were also provided for people to use as reminders once they figured out what coping mechanisms worked. She ended up creating the first version of this kit at this point but a year later, she went back and revised it to what it is above.
