SONIA TAGARI

2018 - 2019

For the final graduate studio project in the MDes Design for Health program at OCAD University, I worked with the research team from connectingMINDS: A Platform for Caregivers of Youth with Psychosis to explore innovative design solutions for the needs of caregivers of youth with psychosis. Through three participatory design workshops and iterative ideation along the way, the final product proposal was a phone app that uses artificial intelligence to create a friendly caregiver assistant that helps alleviate caregiver burden for the user and provides helpful information and local resources. That’s Lumi!

With Lumi’s AI, a user can ask questions about caregiving, prepare for potential obstacles and crises, and talk through emotions for chatbot therapy. The final application has a variety of modules: Voice Diary, Me Time, Pill Pal, Mood Tracker, and Resource Map. Each aims to address different caregiver needs that were identified during workshops.

In every module, Lumi provides AI generated advice pertaining to the content input by the users. For example, if Lumi detects increasingly negative words and phrases in Voice Diary, Lumi will check in with the user to notify of this change and suggest events or actions that may help mood or address problems mentioned in Voice Diary. The core idea is assistance tailored to the caregiver through LUMI’s AI learning. This way, the caregiver receives the resources they need, without being overwhelmed by information. I see LUMI as an opportunity to apply increasingly advanced machine learning to improve accessibility to care resources. This project was a means for me to explore mobile design and possible health application for artificial intelligence.

My roles throughout the project were project lead and head designer. As project lead, I organized each workshop with assistance from the two supporting connectingMINDS designers, creating templates for design activities. These templates not only facilitated information collection for pertinent touch points and moments of design intervention, but also reflected the current discipline of co-design research materials. Futhermore, they served as artifacts to give participants a sense of progress and accomplishment as the design process moved forward. Most participants were new to design, and valued seeing their opinions recorded and applied to the design. As head designer, I made the major design decisions throughout the process with the design team, from thematic analysis of the workshop materials to whiteboarding and paper prototyping. I also created and iterated the digital prototype for the application, making the icons, illustrations, and branding. I envisioned the app as hopeful and friendly, with uplifting colours and sweet illustrations.

For more detailed information about the process and project, please contact me via email at soniatagari@gmail.com

To view the interactive digital prototype, click below:
See Prototype

2018 - 2019

In a project funded by the Healthy Generation Grant with University of Toronto, I lead a design team from OCAD U . We worked with University of Toronto researchers, who were informed by lived-experience as caregivers, and a recruited caregiver group to design a digital platform connecting caregivers to peer navigators and timely resources in Toronto. The project had two research prongs. One was a survey of youth with psychosis and caregivers, handled by the Youth Advisory Committee (YAC), of which the founder of connectingMINDS and other team researchers are members, at the Schizophrenia Society of Ontario (SSO) with involvement from the University of Toronto. The other was a series of co-design workshops where participants with lived experience would work with the design team to create a digital platform to best suit their needs. Managing the design operation, I planned, orchestrated, and analyzed four caregiver engagement workshops alongside the design team. Findings from these workshops guided design decisions and information content for the final prototype. Throughout the project, the design team also gave progress presentations to the stakeholders in the YAC and University of Toronto research group. It is of note that members of the YAC are all youth with experience as caregivers for a family member with psychosis.

I joined the project because I strongly believe in the importance of mental healthcare, especially for youth. I also saw it as opportunity to learn more about mobile app design and prototyping. The design process started with a literature review that outlined the impact of peer-navigation for schizophrenia, provided by the University of Toronto research team. Our team began gathering examples of digital platforms addressing other severe mental illness to use as precedent and inspiration. During participant recruitment for co-design workshops, we ran two preliminary team workshops with members of the YAC. These workshops had a few main purposes: to familiarize the researchers with design activities and design thinking, and to trial run activities for use in the participant workshops while simultaneously gathering initial data.

Activities generated caregiver journey maps for accessing and using psychosis treatment, timelines of resource access with lists of successful resources in the Greater Toronto Area, scenarios during a care journey where caregivers would ideally access a digital platform or mobile app, and possible features that this tool would have. We included a wild care activity to generate solutions for the future and solutions that did not involve a mobile app, just to broaden thinking and encourage the research team to consider scaling the project in different directions.

Once caregivers were recruited, I lead the design team in facilitating four experience-based co-design design workshops. Each built on information gathered in the previous. We showcased the design process, updated the participants on analysis completed by the design and research teams between workshops, gathered feedback on analysis conclusions and design directions, and facilitated participants to share their ideas and make direct edits to the prototype iterations. While planning workshops, I brainstormed with the design team activities to best elucidate the information we wanted. This included points in the care journey where a peer-navigation/information platform would be of most us and what qualities, features, and modes of communication the platform needed. Activities we used were mind mapping, rapid ideation, scenario building, persona building, journey mapping, and paper prototype creation. Not only did these activities gather crucial data, they also serve as artifacts of the design process and markers of progress toward the final design.

Two of the four design workshops devoted a decent chunk of time to feedback on paper prototypes for the digital platform. After using the feedback to hone and tinker, we established a prototype in Invision and hosted five high-fidelity user-testing feedback sessions with caregivers, with action prompts and post-testing interviews. In addition, YAC sent out surveys completed by 40 caregivers across the Greater Toronto Area. The application is in development.

For additional detailed information about the process, project, and more recent prototypes, please contact me via email at soniatagari@gmail.com

2016 - 2017

In a government funded project with St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, design researchers from OCAD U worked to design and develop an ultra-brief training and nasal spray naloxone kit for distribution in a clinical trial. I worked directly with the project design head as a research assistant to gather literature to support design directions, and to assist in directing and analyzing workshops that engaged stakeholders. I had the privilege of working with overdose survivors, whose lived experience provided some of the most essential insights for the project. Many were embedded in the project on the steering committee or consistently present at meetings and workshops.

For additional information, please visit these project websites:
OCADU Health Design Studio: SOONER

PubMed: Protocol for Mixed-Methods Feasibility Study

I joined the project to gain hands on experience in the worlds of public health and harm reduction, and to help with a preventative step against opioid overdose. My role as research assistant took me through hospital corridors, recovery clinics, and emergency rooms to gather observational insights. This served to ground academic data in the reality of overdose response and recovery, supported by interviews with professionals embedded in the care and emergency response aspects of the opioid crisis.

For the literature review, I focused on scholarly articles regarding ethnography and lived experience for opioid use and naloxone counteraction. Findings from these articles were verified by hospital professionals and people with opioid lived experience.

Quotes from the literature review served as prompts in the major stakeholder workshop, which involved experts from across Canada representing policy makers, first responders, nurses, harm reduction advocated, persons who use opioids, and family members of persons struggling with addiction. After assisting with the running the workshop and using open coding to distill thematic elements, I combined workshop findings with supporting literature review evidence to draft a series of Personae. These Personae reflect the data gathered from the scoping stage of design research and serve as public facing tools for harm reduction education. Data from the workshops also translated into journey maps and tools for subsequent workshops that focused specifically on training for and distribution of naloxone. 

I also drafted early mock ups of different public-facing modes of ultra-brief training. These included a digital photo series and a short comic. The design team drew inspiration from the variety of communication channels for airplane safety features.

2017

In a project partnering OCAD University with researchers at the Collaboratory for Research and Innovation embedded in Bridgepoint Active Healthcare hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, design researchers from the Design for Health cohort addressed the complex care needs of stroke patients transitioning from inpatient care to outpatient care. This project worked to identify barriers that prevent patients from receiving outpatient care and to develop of systemic approach to overcome found barriers.

I held the role of project manager throughout this four month collaboration with Bridgepoint, overseeing a team of five other designers from the OCAD U Design for Health, Inclusive Design, and Digital Futures graduate programs. With the design team, I organized a thorough schedule of hospital observations, meetings with survivors of stroke and their caregivers, expert interviews with hospital staff and stroke care professionals, a handful of quick lunchtime workshops, and one full two hour workshop with participants from various levels and disciplines across the hospital. Along the way, I cleared short weekly update presentations our team gave to the members of the Collaboratory to describe our project progress. For these weekly updates, I listened to the progress and findings each team member had accomplished that week, setting up an agenda that would best represent their work and let our ideas shine with concise clarity.

The design team began with hospital observations and a literature review, supplemented by research from the Collaboratory. When my feet were not on the ground at the hospital, leading interviews, and note-taking during all-hands healthcare provider meetings, I was in the design office of Bridgepoint with the design team consolidating findings from observation and literature to create the groundwork for our systems proposal. This foundation of information served as the core of our design personas and initial touchpoint journey maps— used at a “lunch & learn” microworkshop to confirm and add to our understanding of the problems facing stroke survivors. From there, I lead the ambitious 2-hour main workshop, with each member of the team taking the reigns for activities that suited their design strengths. This was a major success, as planning for the workshop required very careful timing in order to maximize attendance from the very busy, disparate healthcare providers working in stroke care.

With the wealth of information gathered, particularly from the main workshop, the design team held multiple brainstorming sessions to synthesize key findings into a series of potential systems. These systems were edited by major stakeholders in another “lunch + learn” microworkshop, catalyzing the design team to consolidate ideas and present a final three-pronged system proposal to help transition stroke patients from in-patient to out-patient.

We envisioned a system of volunteers or hired staff to serve as “care-coordinators”, addressing obstacles recorded in our research such as caregiver education in preparation for discharge, home assessments, and assistance scheduling appointments with primary care physicians. Overall the “care-coordinator” would be part of the care journey for a stroke survivor and their family, starting with entry into Bridgepoint and continuing on to help ensure that outpatient appointments and lifestyle changes are being met on schedule.

For more detailed information about the process and project, please contact me via email at soniatagari@gmail.com

2017

In a project partnered with Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (TRI) in the University Health Network (UHN), eight Design for Health masters candidates worked to propose environmental design changes to the dementia wing at TRI. This unit was retrofitted from a traditional hospital wing, and lacked spacial features that could assist in the care of patients with dementia. Our job as the design team was to research, visualize, and present possible changes to the dementia floor.

The eight of us designers were divided into pairs to focus on a specific aspect of the dementia ward. With my partner, I researched changes to the social spaces of the floor, such as the dining room and the common room, that would promote socialization. Socialization is key not only for quality of life for people living in the dementia ward, but also for maintenance of mental faculties. we also strove to differentiate the social spaces from other areas in the ward, so that the rooms may serve as landmarks to assist in wayfinding. Throughout the process, my partner imparted her experience as an environmental designer while I brought my neuroscience understanding of dementia to the team. The other pairs investigated sonic and lighting perception throughout the ward, integration and orientation of family members in entryways and hallways, and hygiene and wellness in bathing and toilet spaces.

While working in pairs to scan literature, draft focus specific interview questions, and do on-site observations, all groups consistently met for weekly studio to share findings, comment on design directions, and maintain consistency across the topics as to deliver a proposal that worked as a cohesive system. Deliverables throughout the process included literature reviews, notes from observations and interviews, situationals — a cross between a visualization and a mood board for a proposed intervention — and monthly stakeholder meetings where our whole team presented updates of our progress. I often lead the slideshows, helping design team members consolidate their findings for these presentations and providing segues and prompts to assist in highlighting their ideas when they stood to speak.

The final deliverables were a major stakeholder presentation and a printed briefing of the design proposal. Our printed book outlined the research and rationale behind each of the proposed design changes. I assisted in copy writing and proofreading for the final book.

2017

A group project with Denise Philpott, Laura Halleran, and Windemere Jarvis for the OCAD University Design for Health graduate course in Systems & Communications II. 

For a project spanning half of a term, our team researched the patient journey for women navigating Ontario, Canada's Assisted Reproductive Technology system. I was interested in this topic as a career-minded women concerned with reproductive health and the harsh realities of the “biological clock” I knew very little about ART beyond "freezing my eggs” and saw this project as an opportunity to explore. Our final synthesis map, which shows the social and economic causal loops that influence the need for ART and the systemigrams that relate the interactions among women, government, clinics, and resources, serves as a tool for women navigating or considering navigating the ART experience. It also serves as a tool for policy makers to bridge gaps in care and recognize areas where the system is failing women. 

My primary role involved drafting initial maps, gathering research, writing the final system map report, providing input for the final design, and presenting the map for final critique. Denise Philpott headed the final design, with sketches, progress maps, and supporting research gathered by the whole team. A key design decision was the creation three characters of reproductive age to put a face and personality to research-backed ART journeys. Other important motifs were of time loss, frustration, and the ever elusive ova (egg). 

This project was chosen for presentation and discussion at the Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD6) 2017 Symposium, hosted in Oslo, Norway by the Oslo School of Architecture & Design. I attended with Laura Halleran, another team member, to give a slide deck presentation about the visual design process. I got to flex my visual design muscles by putting together the slideshow and a small process brief booklet in the same style as the large systems map.

Click to see Abstract and Methods.

Click to see the presentation notes.

A semester-long project involving an artist or designer of choice and an imagined gallery exhibition of their work. Students designed an artist's catalogue, and a brochure, invitation, poster, and banner advertising the imagined exhibition. 

2015