Creative Waves - Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design - page 50

entire project and a series of accompanying pho-
tographs, made available through the Omnium®
Software galleries pages, gave participants the
instant reality of the problems being faced.
Of the many discussions that occurred through-
out the three-month Creative Waves VIP project,
two discussion threads in particular generation an
enormous amount of interaction and direct infor-
mation from the location itself. The two threads,
facilitated by George and Salim, along with many
other Kenyan participants, together generated over
20,000 words of text in a series of questions and
answers from participants to those able to advise
from the location.
Following a highly structured format of pro-
gression through Omnium's five-stage working
process, including daily news announcements,
weekly lectures written by project coordinators
and invited guests, live online chat sessions with
luminaries in the field of design and health sci-
ences, and progressive design briefs to facilitate the
process of designing public awareness campaigns
about eh six identified health issues, the project
began to hone down a wide variety of suggested
creative approaches until several focused studies
were formed. It was interesting, as well as some-
what frustrating to observe, that the designers in
their smaller design teams were arguably selecting
specific ideas to work on too early in the process
without fully investigating the scope of ideas that
could be potentially created.
During the third identify stage of the project,
the design convenors introduced the notion of
“ worldstorming” where each of the 100 design
participants were asked to come up with ten quick
ideas for campaigns that could promote awareness
of the six health issues. Within a very short time,
over six-hundred ideas were suggested which were
in turn sent to the Help Heal workers in Kenya
for their opinion and feedback. As a result it was
decided that three sets of suggestions would be
taken through stages four and five of Omnium's
OCC working process - a game for school children
to play with their teachers, peers and families; a

series of stickers that conveyed simple messages
about prevention and adherence; and designs for s
set of soccer uniforms to be worn by both formal
teams of young local footballers as well as the
average kid in the street who would be wearing
the outfits as simply trendy street wear as opposed
to formal uniforms.
The designs for each set of campaigns were
themselves taken through the five-stage process
by students and mentors who had been arranged
into new working teams until final solutions were
presented at the end of the seven week design
phase. Each of the final designs were versatile
enough to be able to be adjusted and amended to
deal with any one of the health issues and to date
Omnium is in a stage where it is seeking sponsor-
ship and/or assistance to have the design realised.
On completion of the final designs being produced,
each of the public awareness campaigns is to be
sent to the village of Winam to be facilitated to
the community by the volunteers in location.
All of the process work from both the pharmacy
and design phases of the project can be viewed at
the archive of the Creative Waves project inter-

Figure 3. One of the outcomes of the Creative
Waves VIP Project was a set of soccer kits with
slogans about the dangers of HIV to engage the
young men of Winam who play soccer a great
deal. Here are the packages of the shirts being
sent off to Kenya.