Design Thinking is a tool box of methods and mindsets that shape a growing list of cases that make this world a better place.

Whether it’s thinking outside the box as with the scary fMRI machine, to make it a kid-friendly scanner appearing as a pirate boat journey or thinking about what design can do about the global no waste challenge.

The design thinking approach has proven itself as effective and catchy and education therein is growing - exploding. It thus must lends itself for innovative and needed change in the profession and field of mental health. Mental health challenges are affecting the human experience critically - especially since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic - and in unseen yet wide spread ways.

How might we design lasting mental health with individuals, dyads, triads, and even larger systems?

The other way around, mental health topics are fantastics use cases for the field of design theory and application to put this approach to the test.

It’s good, if an approach can increase revenue and sales, but it is only great if it can positively and directly affect the human experience of this human race, or actually, the human race on this planet. A healthy mind and person needs sustainable, actionable and conscious ways of affecting and interacting with its systems - micro-, meso-, macro and ecosystem included.

How might Design Thinking for Mental Health expand human-centered design to human- & ecology-centered design.

Too many products and services - and hence experiences have been designed without “good design” principles and with little regard to the wellbeing of the human being and their landscape.

Design: Pixel Story Studio heeds to the principles of good design, and applies various design methods - expanded from design thinking to a whole battery of “post it and sharpie magic”.

Psychology: This “Data & Narrative Play Space” (alternative interpretation of logo) also has been built on and around psychology, systemic intervention and prevention for sustainable wellbeing - not just riddance of symptoms & syndromes. (The founder’s CV lists spaces that informed this journey - psychology in academia, in companies, in profit and non-profit and total institutions).

See a list of projects on Good Design & Mental Health. Let’s co-design with people, communities and ecologies in their context desired experiences integrating old and new products & services.