What is it?

An interactive multimedia psychoeducational prevention tool for 14yrs - 17yr old adolescents.  The CD Rom received national exposure and was distributed to all secondary-schools as part of their Social Personal and Health Education (SPHE).

The problem

There were two main drives behind the development of the prevention tool. 

1. Prior to the development of i-figure, Bodywhys, was having trouble meeting the increasing demand for school talks around the country.  This was a very resource-intensive exercise, and fast becoming impossible.
2. One of the strategic goals of the organizations identified for 2007-2011 is to “continue the development of awareness and education programmes”. 

The challenges

Providing an eating disorders prevention tool is somewhat trickier than it first appears because best evidence shows that direct education and awareness about eating disorders can actually be counter-productive (Vandereycken & Noordenbos, 1998). 

Thus, rather than building a novel didactic instrument, we needed to take a different approach, one that challenged pre-conceived ideas about broader issues relating to self-esteem, body image, and media pressures.

The other major challenge, of course, was delivering something that would appeal to adolescents, be interesting and engaging, while avoiding being patronising and without losing seriousness.  How well the product would age was also a concern.

Adolescents have grown up in world that is quite literally “digitally saturated”.  Their teachers, however, have not.  So we needed to make something engaging enough for the end user group, but simple enough so that even the most technology-illiterate among SPHE teachers would be willing to engage with, and deliver the programme.

The solution

Using visual, interactive, and informative elements to get the idea home.

The content in ‘i-figure' focuses on self-esteem and body image, the relationship between food and mood, and media literacy. Personal stories are included as a way to help the student relate to the issues.

Module 1: Food & Mood

Food and mood examines the relationship between physiological needs and emotions.

The big idea: The train of thought.

We thought the best way to conceptualise this relationship was in terms of a journey that one makes towards a particular pattern of thinking, emotions and behaviour.  We felt the best way to illustrate this journey was by using the analogy of a tube map.  This highly recognizable visual piece, facilitated instant understanding of the nature of the relationship between food and mood. 

There are different lines representing different journeys, for example toward good health (eg. Line), but also ill health (eg.  The Bulimia Nervosa and Anorexia Nervosa lines) and these separate journeys are mediated through other lines such as The Positive Living, and the Media Literacy Line. 

The train of thought effectively communicates how these relationships and patterns become cyclical, but also illustrate the opportunities to “hop off” at different intersections, for example, the Getting Help Line consistently crosses over the eating disorders lines.

This section comprises some nine short screens presenting static information on the relationship between food and mood, but it is also highly interactive, encouraging students to explore the map themselves, and employing different paces to give the effect of travelling over the map sections. 

This is a great example of how to effectively combine static information with visual communication of ideas, as well as kinesthetic learning to enhance comprehension.

Module 2: Body image and self-esteem

This module had a lot of content that looks at the connection between self-esteem, body satisfaction, and sense of self.

The big idea: Challenging “the happiness myth”.

Given that there was so much content for this module, we decided to try and tackle the so-called “happiness myth” through the use of background and transitional imagery.  The happiness myth is a belief that has been observed in people with depression that everyone else is happy, functioning, normal etc. etc. but me.  Of course, this assumption is mistaken. 

Taken from a body image and self-esteem perspective, we wanted to challenge the concept that those who look a certain way, are a certain size, or have a certain image are also happy and confident. 

We created imagery that was highly suggestive of contemporary and cutting edge style.  Our characters were also reflective of this image, but were drawn with simple lines so that the overall effect was suggested rather than explicitly illustrated.

One thing we paid particular attention to was facial expressions, which we left open to interpretation to encourage students to critically think about what was actually going on for these characters, versus what the imagery suggests.  The only smiling character is on the phone emphasizing that happiness comes, among other things, from relationships, rather than the right clothes or the right look. 

We used red to increase the tension, which we feel worked well against the subtlety of the remaining imagery.

Module 3: Media literacy

The Media literacy module casts a critical eye over the media industry, the imagery and techniques it uses to sell products, and how these can impact on how individuals feel about themselves and their bodies. 

The big idea: The re-touching studio

Challenging the idea of the “perfect image” we decided to incorporate a simple tool that enables students to see how photographs are manipulated and re-touched.  By dragging a tab over an airbrushed image, the true un-manipulated image is revealed.

We discovered that while most people realize that photographs are re-touched, few know to what extent.  This is a very simple, tangible tool that illustrates the full extent of photograph re-touching.  The images are from an actual airbrushing professional, so they are completely genuine.

We feel the re-touching studio is the real strength of this section as it illustrates just how far from reality the imagry we see actually is.  A simple, effective way to enhance student’s critical evaluation of the media’s imagery, values and its purpose.

Personal stories section

This section tells the stories of people who have recovered from eating disorders and encorporates a mix of audio, video, and animation.

The big idea: ED.

In this animation, the main character tells the story of how ED (a personified eating disorder) has taken over his life. 

The decision was made that the character should be male, as it was felt that this would avoid excluding any of the male students who may be viewing it, and also to move away from the gender stereotyping that often occurs with the belief that eating disorders are a women’s problem.  Finally, the male character helped to consolidate the idea that nobody is immune to eating disorders.

Again, graphics are simple and the earlier part of the animation makes use of greys and duller colours to illustrate the distress of the main character.  The end of the story leads to sucessful resolution through the help of social support, Bodywhys and counselling.  As such, the colours are brighter, and there are more individuals around the main character.

Due to budget constratings, the animation makes use of static backgrounds, which allowed us to create a 3-minute piece of animation for inclusion in the programme.  A valuable addition.

Dissemination

The i-figure programme was launched by Brian Lenihan, TD, Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children.

The CD-Rom was disseminated to every secondary school in the Republic, totaling nearly 800 schools, and over 183,000 students.

Anecdotally, we believe that the programme is also being used as a resource in a specialised eating disorders inpatient treatment centre.

Evaluation & feedback

The following information was collected by Bodywhys from SPHE teachers:

• 77% of SPHE teachers would recommend the resource to others
• 77% of users rate the resource as either very good or excellent
• 69% rate the information in the resource as either very good or excellent.

(Bodywhys, 2006)

We are delighted that a formal evaluation of the programme in terms of its effect on self-esteem, eating-disordered symptoms and behaviours, and levels of media literacy is now under way in the School of Psychology, University College, Dublin.

Implications of this success

Since the roll-out of i-figure, the response has been such that the SPHE Programme has requested that Bodywhys develop a resource to be integrated into the SPHE ciriculum for continuous education.  This is a major testament to the value of a resource such as this.

Because i-figure was built to be so flexible, it will continue to be used as a resource as part of this extended integrated ciriculum.

What we have learned

1. Good ideas don’t age.

Any resource has a shelf-life before it becomes dated.  We feel, however, that resources that are idea-driven rather than bells-and-whistles-driven, will stand the test of time.

1. The value of in-house expertise.

We feel that our ability to translate content into accessible, usable, interactive and most of all, useful programmes is because our team is made up of the right people.  Because of our background in psychology, the community and voluntary sector, and our passion for what we do, we have the right people, and it follows then, we have the right ideas.