Designing for Health: Collaborative Course Project

"Designing for Health," a collaborative project with the health humanities and the community, is open to medical students across all four years, medical residents, and students in other health professions at the University of Alberta.

Part of the interdisciplinary Spring Session course called "Radical Imagings and Imaginings: Social Design and the Health Humanities," students work in cross-disciplinary groups and with community partners tol identify critical issues and visualise design concepts and solutions for health problems.

Over a 7-day period, together with design students in the Faculty of Arts, participants will learn about health communication design and research. They will explore various approaches to image-making for communication, using photographic, typographic and illustrative media and technologies to create concepts for infographics, graphic novels, banners, posters, phone applications, etc.

Informed by the InSight 2: Engaging the Health Humanities international exhibition and the "Design, the Health Humanities and the Community" symposium participants present their final concepts during InSight 2, in both physical and virtual spaces.

Participants are invited to provide feedback about their experience. This feedback will be used to inform shared learning and interdisciplinary practices that engage communities through design and the health humanities, and open up ongoing opportunities for inter-professional and public involvement in envisioning medicine and health for the future.