➭ clear house, clear mind
a force for gentle change
Winner of the ECU 2025 Design Award for Innovation, Clear House, Clear Mind is a year long exploration of executive dysfunction in the home, and how that shapes an individual’s self-esteem and sense of value. It’s been a project built primarily on reflective research culminating in empathetic narrative building that seeks to showcase the small and large ways this impairment affects day-to-day while also lending normalcy to these struggles.
Explanatory video on Executive Dysfunction
Working within the space of mental health and health design, there were a couple of boxes to tick when it came to the visual language of the project. It had to be personable, approachable, and relatable; the project’s target audience were people in their twenties, and were now taking on the brunt of home management from chores to the larger planning that goes around maintaining your own household.
Most importantly, though, were the central characters of Clear House, Clear Mind. This crew had to be diverse, encompass a breadth of experiences and identities within the main age group while also critically considering stereotypes surrounding the topic. That is how the Clear House Crew was born.
It is widely accepted that fiction is one of the easiest ways to develop empathy; being put in another’s shoes and walking a mile in them can help other’s understand other perspectives. So to say Clear House, Clear Mind is an empathetic storytelling project might have been redundant, but its true meaning is to present these stories empathetically as well. It looks not to excuse behaviour, but to shine a kinder light on the underlying struggles that might fuel hard habits to break.
