Arts Thread

Chronic pain patients are often caught in a healthcare system that implicitly positions them to be passive recipients of care while simultaneously requiring them to be active coordinators of their own treatment trajectory. This fundamental contradiction leaves patients feeling stuck in a loop and reduced to mere clinical data points as they navigate fragmented services without the tools or support needed to take meaningful ownership of their care. PainPass addresses this contradiction by reframing patient documentation from an extractive process to an empowerment tool, inviting active patient engagement. Rather than patients providing information that disappears into clinical systems, the intervention introduces patient-owned documentation that travels with them across providers and appointments. In placing a personal pain care passport, and by extension, the person, at the centre of redesigned service touchpoints, PainPass transforms the relationship between patients and healthcare providers from passive compliance to collaborative documentation. The intervention shows promises in improving the patient experience with ownership, continuity, and independence, ultimately demonstrating how design can tackle wicked problems by empowering those most affected to become active participants in the solution itself.

Project by Zoe Linh Tran & Samuel Connolly, NCAD - MA Interaction Design 25 How might we bring policy to the public, and engage the public in policymaking? The 'Policy Vending Machine' is an interactive public installation driven by this central question. Research shows that policy is often perceived as abstract and detached from life. People are reluctant to talk about it, out of anxiety, anger, or ambivalence. Trust is dwindling and the gap is widening. To bridge this gap, the project combines knowledge from civil servants at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform with the real voices, and lived experience, of people from The Liberties, Dublin, to embed policy into the general discourse of everyday life—meeting people where they are, where the conversations are taking place. As a public intervention, it invites diverse citizen perspectives through discussions with simple prompts, and nudges them to reflect on how these issues relate to their own life, using tangible takeaways and educational materials, thus creating a novel approach to grass-root civic engagement.