Seminar 2-Design for Caring: Stress & Anxiety Activities Report

This session was conducted by Neasa and Kruthi about the topic for the design for caring for stress and anxiety people. The session explained how technology has become the main course for stress and its negative impact on the personal lives of people who are deeply depended on them. Following this negative image now they explained how this technology can be used as a medium for destressing. A detailed explanation about this with examples was provided. One of them was the application Sleep by Headspace which helped people in sleeping. The second section of the seminar went through ASMR ( Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). An ASMR audio of virtual haircutting was shared to the class for listening in individual pair of earphones which could give us experience the ASMR effect. It seemed that almost half of the class experienced a distressing or anxious feeling but I didn’t feel any. It was explained that those who felt a kind of anxious had ASMR audio effects.

Activity

Each of us was divided into different teams and there were 5 series fun activities that were waiting for us after the break. Each member of the team has to complete an activity and pass the relay to the next person. Finally, the team that completes all the tasks first wins. My team members were Tarun, Stephen and Yan. Since there were 5 different activities one of us had to take part in an extra task for completing the race.

1st task was to eat off an Oreo biscuit that was kept on the forehead while sitting on the chair. Stephen initiated in performing this task. As soon as he finished up eating he passed on the relay to Tarun for 2nd task which was to throw one skittle from a distance marked into the narrow hole of unturned plastics. This task was a bit challenging for Tarun but somehow he completed and moved to Yan. The 3rd activity was blindfolded football. To move a box from marked from location A to B. It was the most challenging because of the noise and distraction happening across the workshop. After completing he moved to Stephen who performed his second task of bursting the balloon form opponents leg. But unfortunately, he came last. He passed on the replay to me as we were still on the race. The last and the final task that all the teams were competing against was the flip the cup with orange squash. Whichever team find the sticker behind the cup.wins the match. Within that challenging atmosphere and fun happening around I was able to find the sticker and finish the game making our team first.

All the voices, pressures and competitive spirt happening across the game reflected differently to everyone. Personally I felt too competitive in pressured and challenging situations. Overall the activity was kind of fun and entertaining all the team competed against each other. The activity was finished by handling medals of appreciation for winning first two winning teams.