Future Journeys

Abstract

“It’s a given that parenting is hard work. But when you’re raising a child with special needs, the level of care and stress is not just higher, it shifts the foundations of families and adds unimaginable complexities for everyone involved.” (Pinhorn, 2018, www.gottman.com)This project is developed in collaboration with The Ontzorghuis, a Dutch organisation founded to support parents of children with special needs. This assignment aims to enhance the capabilities of the CSN parents’ community to fulfill their basic psychological needs, which are essential for psychological health and well-being (Decy & Ryan, 2008).Inspired by the Capability approach (Alkire & Deneulin, 2009; Sen, 2004; Nussbaum, 2001) a qualitative study was conducted to evaluate the common capabilities that characterise the CSN parents’ community, as well as the individual practices or paths of success that parents come up with to deal with their challenging circumstances. The study consisted of initial desk research based on the social media expression of CSN parents and remote field research that involved 6 CSN parents who participated in a series of generative research exercises and interviews. An innovative approach for remote user research is presented. It is based on metaphorical visualization exercises that are able to engage a sensitive community with little time available into a conversation about intimate and relevant topics that are often difficult to share.The findings collected from this research narrowed down the scope of this project into the topic of future thinking. Many parents experience fear and anxiety when facing the big unknown that supposes having a life-long dependent child. Their capability to think about the future appears as a decisive factor in their wellbeing. The proposed solution, Future Journeys tool, integrates the concept of Resourcefulness (Giaccardi & Nicenboim, 2018) into the context of future thinking. While the capabilities of this community are significantly reduced, the opposite may happen with their resourcefulness (ability to creatively adapt to challenges for which no commonly agreed solution was available). Future Journeys leverages the creative ways of approaching future thinking of some individuals to expand the perspective of relatable others who, although in similar circumstances, experience a negative relationship with the unknown future. The proposed tool is presented with the shape of a mobile phone application that aims to provide CSN parents with a common language to reflect and share their perspectives about future thinking. The solution promotes self-reflection through an exercise of guided metaphorical thinking and completes the experience with social interactions where the users share their perspectives to inspire others. This solution enhances the basic psychological needs of CSN parents. The impact of the tool on its users’ wellbeing was evaluated taking into account Self Determination Theory’s three fundamental needs. Furthermore, the results provided valuable insight into the potential of the tool to expand the capabilities of the CSN parents’ community and helped to draw further recommendations for the future development of the tool.