This week I read an article in The Guardian about a mirror designed to reflect only if the user smiles, aimed at cancer patients to improve their sense of wellbeing. The article was scathing, why should anyone be forced to smile? Clearly this is the invention of a man and the embodiment of patriarchal notions that women should smile whether they feel like it or not, or is it?
Some research to find out more about the product led me to the youtube video below. This changed my opinion about the idea. The designer is working with the intention of improving the quality of life of cancer patients this device has come from his work with a patient about her experience and identity. Looked at now I see the design as a provocation, to see beyond the patient to the person. To make not just patients, but family and friends, question the way in which a diagnosis can overwhelm everything and create a normality in which the patient is no longer seen for the person that they are, but only as the disease that affects them. In questioning this the design crosses into the territory of art. With a price tag of $2000+ it is unlikely that this will be widely taken up, but the provocation that it offers, to look at our expectations of people with cancer and to see beyond the disease is one worth thinking about.
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