In collaboration with Toufoula, a Lebanese NGO dedicated to improving children’s quality of life, the MENA Design Research Center became involved in developing innovative tools for better health awareness amongst the youth in Lebanon. Following their last Dream Rooms project, Toufoula approached us with a new initiative. The aim is to promote healthier lifestyles within the young community but unlike traditional awareness campaigns, we decided to embark on a different endeavor. In order to find out how to reach today’s kids, we designed cultural probe kits that would help us dig deeper into their world and learn more about their interests and health awareness through inspirational qualitative data. Coming up with the right questions to ask is the most crucial part of the design process; we concentrated on giving the kids all the tools that could convey their thought, ideas, opinions and feelings. By introducing a camera, the child could now take a photo of a preferred object or setting, a sound recorder to explain certain emotions that might be more difficult to write down, stickers to indicate likes and dislikes, and colorfully animated postcards to be inspired and answer some personal questions about themselves. All these various multi-sensual and interactive methods allow the child to be more responsive and intuitive. This form of design research has proven to be far more effective than concrete interviews with researchers in sterile observation rooms with stalking cameras. It allows the child to feel free in his /her environment and explore his/ her world with creativity and insight. We are currently prototyping the first kit which will soon be distributed to a school in Beirut. The results will be collected and analyzed for further modification before mass production and distribution.
