Heart Times : exploring the role of illustration in a healthcare setting for children.

• Main Author: Ng, Serene Wei-En.
• Other Authors: Michael Thaddeus Tan Koon Boon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Visual arts and music
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52339
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Heart Times is a design project that aims to integrate illustration into healthcare. Targeted at children below the age of 6, and designed according to the needs of the therapist working with these children, this project explores how illustration can address the psychological, social and emotional issues battled by children in the hospital. Heart Times concedes the fact that while most children dread visiting the hospital due to the fear of unfamiliarity or pain from treatments, it is the very first experience of being separated from their parents or guardian that is often most daunting to them. This project seeks to attend to this very fear of separation anxiety in the child patient, through the adventure embarked on by a protagonist with the same mindset and fears. Besides serving as a platform for the therapist to open up topics with child patients, my project also hopes to comfort children with the possibility that the hospital is not such a frightful place to be in after all.