On behalf of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, I worked with my project group to design a critical design within the theme of “work.” The design was created based on a friction we discovered within a studied social system. This social system focused on the growing problem of too much stress and burnouts among employees.

Within this social system, we conducted research. One of the most important conclusions we reached is that stress levels and the number of burnouts have increased in recent years. We also found that the way of working has changed over time: from physical labor to mental labor. We combined these two conclusions – the rise in stress levels and the shift from hand labor to head labor – and used them in our critical design.

Our critical design is a prosthesis intended for people struggling with stress and burnout. This prosthesis restricts the worker’s ability to move their hands. The restriction is based on measured brain activity: when there is no brain activity, the prosthesis can be used and the worker can move their hands again. With this, we want to start a discussion and make people think.