Making Design Fun Again focused on encouraging collaboration and creative experimentation as a means of creative revival for anxious design students.
The Problem: Students struggle to get started on projects, are resistant to creative exploration, reliant on design crutches, and paralyzed by anxiety or the fear of failure.
"Anxiety is the leading cause for visits to college counseling centers." - Association of College and University Counseling Center Directors
"As of 2015, 6.3 million teens were diagnosed with an anxiety disorder." - National Institutes of Mental Health
"21.9 % of students said that...anxiety had affected their academic performance." - American College Health Association 2015, National College Health Assessment Survey
"Play allows people to cognitively work through and reconcile conflicting emotions, also enabling the relief of negative emotional states."
Kenneth D. Locke, PhD / Professor of Psychology, University of Idaho
"You can't teach creativity. All you can do is let it blossom, and it blossoms in play."
Peter Gray, PhD, "Free to Learn," 2015 / Research Professor of Psychology, Boston College
