M2.1: Challenging Health-Related Stigma Through Design

This project aims to challenge health-related stigma for people with heath conditions or medical needs from a design perspective, and explores how designers can influence health-related stigma through their methods and inherent qualities of their work. Furthermore, this project aims to start a debate about the role, motivation, interest, and perspective of designers and explore how to motivate change.

Three design explorations are presented to illustrate different design approaches to challenging health-related stigma in different user contexts. The approach was strongly inspired by how the target group copes with stigma, which explored how the user can express medical identity through design and how design can support normalization strategies that challenge stigma. Insights from the designer and bystander perspective are analyzed and discussed in relation to the project and the greater context.