Innovation & Technology Product Design
Max Phillips
Hi, I’m Max! I’m a curious and creative designer, specialising in service design and research gathering. With a background in engineering and product design, I have developed a mixture of analytical and innovative skills, helping me to respond to every problem I face in the best way I can.
I like to approach design in a fun and engaging manner, providing out of the box solutions and services which provoke conversation, new lines of thought and create unique user experiences. I am able to generate my own thorough research, test hypotheses, learn from my findings and iterate this into new designs quickly and effectively. In this way I can highlight the challenges that my design must respond to, prove why these are important and create refined design solutions.
MUMBLE
Every day, people who stutter (PWS) suffer from systematic discrimination and self-stigmatisation. This impacts quality of life, mental health and confidence. Society’s lack of understanding of stuttering leads to feelings of shame, inferiority and loneliness among people who stutter. These emotions and reactions create a world where people who do not talk “normally“ are not always accepted or treated with respect. This reinforces a negative perception of stuttering, an issue which has never been properly highlighted or addressed.
Enter MUMBLE, the stutter friendly charity.
From the research I conducted, I learned that to mitigate the fear of stuttering, we need to encourage all of society to learn to accept and embrace it, not just placing the onus on people who stutter to fix the problem themselves.
MUMBLE’s main goals are to visualise what life with a stutter is like for people that don’t stutter, and to show people that do stutter that they are not alone, fostering pride, empathy and understanding. MUMBLE operates through cafe takeovers, hijacking ordinary cafes into communicatively inclusive learning environments. MUMBLE encourages cafe goers to step into the shoes of someone who stutters, prompting understanding and conversation through a range of tools and resources. Then, after two to three days, MUMBLE relocates to a different café, continuing the cycle and spreading the word.
This system allows for the challenges of stuttering to be recognised and empathised with by society, while offering a platform for people who do stutter to express themselves, share experiences, learn and connect with each other in their local areas.
The MUMBLE tip jar
The little book of understanding
The MUMBLE menu
STUTTER MONSTERS
KIN
Welcome to KIN! A new supplementary health service, seeking to prevent illness before it starts and connect communities through food.
In 2034, societies have become more fragmented than ever, with rising worries about privatised healthcare and a lack of proper nutrition.
KIN allows communities to approach healthcare through a non-medical approach, using food as natural and preventative medicines for the suppression of general ailments. KIN provides its users with personalised gut microbiome check-ups, highlighting what they are deficient in. KIN also provides the community with seasonal recipe lists, made to tackle all kinds of different deficiencies, empowering users to understand what foods their body needs to be strong and prevent ill health.
Finally, KIN encourages users to connect with one another through cooking, providing platforms to arrange cooking and community events, establishing new bonds and connections over food.