Design for Mood Resilience

Abstract

The goal of this report is to study the way in which female university students (aged 18 to 25) deal with their moods during their menstruation, and to use this information to design a product to help them deal with their negative moods in a healthy way, by using resilience-focused mood-regulation strategies. Literature research and the field study conducted in this project show that menstruation is very negatively experienced by women, regardless of how heavy their menstruation is experienced. Their moods are mostly influenced by pain and the inconvenience of bleeding, while the study also showed that the biggest obstacle in daily life is the fluctuating moods caused by hormones. These fluctuations exist in personal patterns, but no literature nor this project’s field study shows universal patterns in mood fluctuations. The most practised mood strategies are rest, withdraw and repress. The study shows that female students do not want to show weakness, they want to work as well as they normally do at university and take painkillers to do so. They ignore all other struggles which tends to exhaust them, resulting in a lack of energy when they arrive home. This is when they finally rest and withdraw, as desired. This project presents the product ‘Mood Booth’ as a solution to these problems. The Mood Booth is a room, centrally placed in every university, for menstruating students to withdraw in. The room is designed for these students to perform a ritual in. This ritual is based on the two resilience-focused mood-regulation strategies most valuable to most menstruating women: embrace (embracing and accepting moods) and detach (distinguish between self and mood and engagement in mindfulness). The design of the Mood Booth’s interior stimulates the practise of these two mood regulation strategies in a twenty-minute ritual, which is guided by light changes. A visit to the Mood Booth should result into a more positive mood, a calmer state of mind and more strength on the long-term to benefit both the academic performance and the quality of personal time during menstruation. The outside of the Mood Booth is a statement, through both location and through the message on the front of the Mood Booth, against the stigma attached to menstruation. The Mood Booth aims to improve moods and does so by stimulating resilience-focused mood-regulation strategies, which answers closely to the design brief. The Mood Booth is also created to answer to the issues found in the research, while also tackling the stigma around menstruation.