Dana Fridman

Socially Designed: A Prescription for Brain Health.

Dana is a designer, researcher, and lecturer at Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington. Her background includes psychology and design and her practice and research involve digital design, interaction design, design for health, computer-mediated communication, design education, and user experience.

Dana's research investigates how to design social interaction tools and frameworks for brain health in both in-person and online settings. This research tackles a health issue from a design perspective, a unique approach that helps us reveal new areas for improvement in our mission to prevent dementia and Alzheimer's disease. The thesis guides readers through a design for health process, while investigating interactions between humans and how mediating artefacts and frameworks could influence those interactions. The final results provide a set of design principles that could be used in communities and social technologies.

Read more from the Design Assembly's profile.

Supervisors

Dr Leon Gurevitch, School of Design Innovation

Dr Yoram Barak, Department of Psychological Medicine, Otago Medical School, University of Otago

Academic Qualifications

2011 BA in Psychology 
2013 Diploma in Graphic Design
2016 Master in Design Innovation
PhD (current - submitted for examination in December 2022)

Academic Awards

2014 Summer Research Scholarship
2015 MedTech Core Student Grant
2016 Best Poster/Demo Award by the International Conference on Digital Health - Designing a game for upper limb rehabilitation following a stroke
2019 Faculty Strategic Impact Research Initiative - Socially Designed: A Prescription for Brain Health

Publications

You can see a list of Dana's publications on her staff page.