Helping Anorexia’s Treatment through Design: an interview with Guylaine Sauvaget-Lasserre, clinician psychologist
Jean-Patrick Péché: Your words strike a chord with a number of projects carried out by our students last year on young adult eating habits, and especially on fruit and vegetable consumption. Together with a sociologist, we observed young people and their eating rituals when in a group setting. This helped us grasp the symbolism inherent to sharing a pizza, a bag of chips, and even in “fake sharing”, or when each youth orders a hamburger, and sits at the same table as his/her friends in a fast food restaurant. This experience proved extremely interesting. This sharing goes beyond what you described earlier. Here’s another question though: As an organizer of visual expression workshops with the same demographics, do you think working with a chef could enhance your current approach with patients?
Guylaine Sauvaget-Lasserre: I don’t think so. It could be interesting, nonetheless, to use these techniques in applied culinary art workshops as chefs bring to the table their respective know-how in fields where caregivers or designers have limited knowledge, such as the molecular structure of food, preparation and presentation. Although not a chef, Aurore observed these teenagers’ daily eating habits at the hospital, and took note of their impressions of the food offered, which included, among others, “bland”, “shapeless”, and “unpleasant.” As a result, she sought to reintroduce a true sensory dimension. We are all different, and our sensory acuity is specific to each one of us. For instance, some teenagers systematically smell their food before eating, which is quite rare.
Design is fed by a connex discipline (psychology) and vice-versa
Jean-Patrick Péché: Let’s get back to Aurore’s work. She first studied teenage behavior and anorexia, and then branched off in the direction of teenage and, in general, young adult eating habits. Her method engendered an approach that meant departing from a pathology in order to learn more about it, as she has demonstrated, to then applying a part of her observations to the design of products or food items aimed at young adults. Does this method seem relevant to you?
Guylaine Sauvaget-Lasserre: Starting from the unique to reach the universal is always relevant, even if the opposite can be said. Considering anorexia to be a specific feature that can serve as a platform for analyzing teenage and adult eating habits seems plausible to me. The goal is to understand how something that failed to be built or was taken apart during a person’s development leads to pathology generation. Focusing on a target population that she had already studied was very clever on Aurore’s part. I was a bit concerned that the experience would be a failure. It seemed next to impossible how a complete novice could gain sufficient know-how to run workshops and devise a relevant design concept. This student worked really hard to make up for her limited knowledge in the field as shown in the quality and consistency of her thesis.
Jean-Patrick Péché: Here’s an interesting point: The problem with design professions is that they are fundamentally transdisciplinary. Knowing this, we need to set limits and assess the skill sets involved. This is why we are interested in having your opinion on how Aurore managed to bring psychology into the picture.
Guylaine Sauvaget-Lasserre: Aurore had both an in-depth and relevant grasp on psychology in that she incorporated the concepts she studied, which can be seen not only in her bibliography, but also in her thesis. Hence, and contrary to anything I’ve witnessed during teaching, Aurore seemed very open to other subject areas, and exhibited a mindset that is to be encouraged and nurtured.
Architecture of the "Arthur's network" service
Jean-Patrick Péché: Indeed, we strive to instill open-mindedness in the students. Designers have little to no information regarding an issue, and are not in a position to project any kind of ego prior to understanding what the issue entails. This attitude is central to our teaching methods.
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