Kara is an online service for people with cancer, designed to empower people undergoing treatment for cancer and other life-changing diseases.
The project, led by Rohan Gunatillake, began with an approach from a doctor at the UPMC hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“They have a unit called Integrative Oncology which helps cancer patients access a range of non-clinical therapies and the lead oncologist there was a long-time user of our app buddhify,” Rohan says. This led to research with a patient group, looking at how meditation could support these people at an incredibly difficult time in their lives.
Working with the team and their existing patient user group led to a website being developed rather than an app, to give access to the largest possible group of people. When creating the guided audio content, the team also made sure “not to overtly use any explicit mention of cancer, so that people with other conditions or in other situations would also find it useful”.
“But perhaps the most important one was to design Kara in such a way that it gave the person using it agency,” Rohan adds, “rather than placing them in the position of a passive recipient of treatment – which is what so much of the clinical experience of course is.”
In Rohan’s experience, people usually take an interest in meditation because of “some kind of crisis or a sense of curiosity”. His journey began with curiosity, but he was immediately struck “that I had never really looked inside myself before”. Developing his own abilities to feel calmness and kindness meant “that I totally fell down the extraordinary rabbit hole that meditation can be”.
However, while he loved meditation Rohan struggled with the detachment between the traditional practices he was learning and his “fast, digital, urban” life which seemed completely separate.
He “started playing around with how to adapt conventional meditation practices for wherever I was and whatever I was doing” which led to the creation of the app buddhify, which offers short meditations tailored to different situations such as ‘Feeling stressed’, ‘Being online’ and ‘Work break’. Today buddhify users have meditated for over 60 million minutes.
“The fact that this thing I imagined, and then led, has helped so many people around the world, often in difficult times, is something that moves me on a daily basis,” Rohan says, with an updated version due later this year, with “new designs and design ideas” which he believes are “really very special”.
“Design matters because meeting people’s needs matter, and enabling people to feel joy matters,” he adds.
When V&A Dundee was first announced Rohan “was excited that such an ambitious project was coming to such an important creative city”. “And now that V&A Dundee is almost with us, I just can’t wait to visit for the first time. And for the second. And for the third. And for all the other times.”
We are delighted to welcome Rohan to V&A Dundee’s Design Champions, for his work connecting design, technology and meditation techniques to help improve the lives of people around the world, including people with debilitating and terminal illnesses.
To find out more, please try Kara or visit Rohan’s website.
The V&A Dundee Design Champions are inspirational designers creating high-quality work and helping to enhance people’s lives, or champions of the power of design to improve the world.
We will announce 50 Design Champions in the run-up to the museum opening on Saturday 15 September 2018.
V&A Dundee’s Design Champions project is working with Dezeen as its media partner.
Dezeen is the world’s most popular and influential architecture and design magazine, with an audience of 2.5 million unique visitors each month.
