2021-22 Summer Studentships


Thanks for your interest in our Good Health Design Summer Studentships. We have now filled up all our summer studentship positions for the year.

Please check in again next year for the next round of summer studentship opportunities. These are usually posted as early as August. Follow us on our social media @goodhealthdesign to find out as soon as our summer studentships are open for applications.

If you are interested or curious about postgraduate studies and what it can offer, feel free to check out our past Master's projects here or get in touch with us at goodhealthdesign@aut.ac.nz for a chat. Our team is highly experienced in supervising real-world applied design projects with external partners, and can match students to great Master's projects that align with where they want to be in the future.

2023-24 Summer Studentships


This year, AUT's Good Health Design have several awesome opportunities for design graduates interested in pursuing postgraduate studies in design for health and wellbeing. Learn more about how to apply and the projects on offer below.

How to apply.
To apply for the summer studentship, send your CV, portfolio and a statement about why you want this opportunity, which summer studentship(s) you are interested in (this can be more than one) and why you would be suitable for this role to goodhealthdesign@aut.ac.nz. Applicants may be contacted for more information or for a short interview to get to know you better (if we haven't met you before). Apply as soon as you can, we will close applications once we have filled in spots. Summer studentships are 10-weeks full time (37.5 hours per week), completed over the summer break from November 2023 to February 2024 (with a 2-week closedown period over Christmas from late December 2023 — early January 2024 (TBC)). You will be paid a stipend (tax-free) of $7,500.

Supervision Team.
All projects will be supervised by the staff at Good Health Design.

Your Role.
You will be working closely with the supervision team to carry out your assigned design/research project (project opportunities as outlined below). This role will require you to work at Good Health Design (at AUT) for the duration of the summer studentship and be part of a cohort with other summer students. You will need to document your research and design process throughout the project, and produce a report/presentation at the end of your role.

Requirements.
  • We are looking for passionate design students with an interest in design for health and wellbeing. You should be a critical thinker, have human-centred design skills and be a good visual communicator.
  • You need to be at the end of your third-year as a design student at AUT (or a recent design graduate from another university) intending to enroll into AUT's postgraduate programme in 2024.
  • Preference will be given to students wanting to do postgraduate research in design for health and wellbeing space.
  • You must be eligible to work in New Zealand.

If you are interested or curious about postgraduate studies and what it can offer, feel free to check out our past Master's projects here or get in touch with us at goodhealthdesign@aut.ac.nz for a chat. Our team is highly experienced in supervising real-world applied design projects with external partners, and can match students to great Master's projects that align with where they want to be in the future.

The project opportunities.

We currently have the following summer studentship opportunities. Please apply early even if the following opportunities do not align with your skills, as there may be other opportunities coming up that would be suitable.
Museum of Meaningful Moments

The Museum of Meaningful Moments (MMM) provides an online space for people to share small, meaningful moments from their everyday lives that may otherwise go unnoticed. Seeing COVID-19 lockdowns as an opportunity for people to slow down and reflect on what mattered to them, MMM aims to build an ongoing collection of appreciative moments during this globally challenging time.

We're looking for two design students, interested in illustration and/or animation, be interested in driving social media, and who can demonstrate leadership, collaborate and be responsible for the following:

  • Visualise and illustrate the ‘data’ or stories that emerge from our ‘Imagining Community Wellbeing’ projects and related symposium, and archive this in the online museum
  • Manage the MMM social media to grow new followers and maintain engagement with the existing online community
  • Managing submissions and posting material as it is submitted
  • Creating events and activities to support community engagement or activities  
  • Create a book that collects some of the best stories and submissions to the MMM to be published and used as a potential research tool/workshop
Museum of Meaningful Moments – Engaging communities

The Museum of Meaningful Moments (MMM) provides an online space for people to share small, meaningful moments from their everyday lives that may otherwise go unnoticed. Seeing COVID-19 lockdowns as an opportunity for people to slow down and reflect on what mattered to them, MMM aims to build an ongoing collection of appreciative moments during this globally ongoing challenging time.

MMM is a live prototype to explore community ideas of subjective wellbeing. This research dissemination tool operates both as a research project and a creative research artefact. So far, we have used MMM to generate data on various themes from our other research projects. Part of using MMM as a research tool successfully requires deep thinking into how best to improve visibility and engagement from the community. In the past we have collaborated with organisations to bring MMM to their spaces for specific events as a way of collecting stories from the community.

We're looking for a design student(s), interested in illustration, and who can conduct research/do writing around engaging communities in a physical space. The student must demonstrate leadership, collaborate with our team, and be responsible for the following:

  • Write up the research findings of existing MMM engagements and collaborations to date (as a potential research paper)
  • Research and develop an engagement campaign for MMM into an existing established event (Zine Fest) to evaluate a different way of recording engagement with communities, which includes management of the MMM social media and website as part of this.
Design for Health Symposium 2023

Good Health Design will be running its Design for Health Symposium in December 2023, to explore how we work with communities to bring their solutions to life – but with a specific focus on rangatahi as the leaders of the future. Mainstream providers have a role in working with those most underserved. They must also give space and time to allow rangatahi to lead and design their solutions and ways of doing things. This will require reimagining how ‘health’ and ‘wellness’ are conceptualised and addressed within contemporary practices and systems in Aotearoa, and will need to be people-centred, community-driven, co-produced, and underpinned by authentic partnerships.  

We are exploring a new format of our symposium this year, having a series of talks by keynote speakers, each followed by an opportunity for attendees to discuss and respond to the talk in small groups through creative activities. We intend to invite the attendees to contribute any reflections or thoughts or insights from their discussion to a collective brainstorm. The aim of the summer studentship is to support Good Health Design to collate these collective brainstorms into a visual zine (or similar) as a record and archive of symposium’s proceedings for documentation and sharing back to symposium attendees.

We’re looking for a design student with an interest in design for health research, researching with communities, is skilled in illustration and graphic design, is a critical thinker, and who can demonstrate leadership, initiative and be responsible for the following:

  • Record, archive and write up the symposium event (post-symposium) for documentation on the symposium website page, and for sharing across social media platforms
  • Document, sort and organise collective brainstorms from the post-talk discussions and collate this into a visual zine (or similar format) for sharing back to symposium attendees
  • Attending the Design for Health Symposium 2023 (Wednesday 6th December) to understand the proceedings and be able to capture the vibe of the event
  • General studio support
  • Other related activities may be included
Method Campaign – Promoting the research framework

METHOD is a resource written for students, researchers and practitioners whose work sits at the intersection of design and health. It is built on research undertaken by two design-led research labs, one in the United Kingdom (Lab4Living, Sheffield-Hallam University) and the other in New Zealand (Good Health Design, AUT), who have dedicated the last two decades to building an understanding of the role that design research might play in the broader context of health and wellbeing.

Over the last two decades we have recognised that some researchers struggle with how best to articulate their research. Sometimes there is confusion over the difference(s) between what is design and what is design research. Consequently, there is a need to build confidence in Design for Health research, methods and approaches so that outcomes are better understood and valued.  

Building on the experience of our team and that of our overseas partners, we have built METHOD as a resource to help students, researchers and practitioners tell the story of their research. Often we put most of our time and effort into doing the research that we leave little time to properly capture and disseminate the findings and outcomes of our research in a way that is accessible to those who might benefit from it. METHOD tries to bridge that gap, by guiding users through a process of breaking their research down into a framework covering originality, rigour and significance.

METHOD has just been launched in late June 2023, but needs to be promoted in ways that highlights the benefits of this framework and resource to others. In this way we hope to evaluate the effectiveness of METHOD as a resource and tool. This summer studentship is in collaboration with Lab4Living, UK.

We're looking for a design student interested in research and graphic design, who can demonstrate leadership, collaborate and be responsible for the following:

  • Research, design and execute a campaign that promotes the METHOD framework and its contents
  • Work in collaboration with the team and external partners from Lab4Living in the UK to develop a version of METHOD that can be used in a workshop setting to help students, academics and researchers tell the story of their research.
Osteoarthritis Guidebook – Short Version

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common joint disorder and the most prevalent form of arthritis. In 2010, OA ranked as the 11th highest cause of years lived with disability worldwide. A recent 2020/21 health survey indicated that 10.3% of adults in Aotearoa New Zealand (AoNZ) live with a diagnosis of OA. Due to an ageing population, this is estimated to increase to 12.7% by 2040. Furthermore, the financial impact of arthritis on New Zealand’s healthcare system in 2018 was approximately $12.2 billion. The economic and societal burden of OA is further compounded by ongoing rises in modifiable risk factors (i.e. sedentary lifestyles and obesity), leading to global concern.

OA negatively affects peoples’ daily activities and participatory life roles. Research shows that OA leads to greater activity limitations in walking, dressing, lifting, and carrying objects than other musculoskeletal and rheumatic conditions. Providing education in the form of written and verbal information to improve patients’ knowledge of OA management is one of the primary recommendations from the NICE (2015) guidelines.  

In 2020, our team worked in partnership with Dr Daniel O’Brien and Associate Professor Richard Ellis (Physiotherapy Department, School of Clinical Sciences, AUT) on a resource for OA specific to an AoNZ context. During the development of the AoNZ OA Guidebook, Arthritis New Zealand and Counties Manukau DHB (Middlemore Hospital) staff said they would value a short-form version of the resource (O’Brien et al., 2022). This is supported by research showing that providing too much information to patients in one go can negatively impact comprehension (Klerings et al., 2015). Currently, there is no nationally accepted evidence-based short-form educational booklet for people with OA in AoNZ. Over the past year, BHsc PhtyHons student Blake Francis, has been working on co-designing a short educational booklet for people with osteoarthritis in Aotearoa New Zealand. This summer studentship is in collaboration with Centre for Person Centred Research. This summer studentship is in collaboration with Daniel O'Brien and Richard Ellis.

We're looking for a design student interested in graphic design (publication, layout and potentially also illustration), who can demonstrate leadership, collaborate and be responsible for the following:

  • Work in partnership with staff and stakeholders to take the research findings and insights to develop and design a short form educational booklet based on the existing AoNZ Osteoarthritis Guidebook
  • Write up the design decisions and approach of the development of this short form educational booklet for research journals
Information to manage fatigue after Guillain Barré Syndrome

Guillain Barré Syndrome (GBS) is an autoimmune condition that attacks the peripheral nervous system - most people normally make a good physical recovery with rehabilitation however many people are left with significant fatigue. We (Suzie Mudge, Greta Smith & Gareth Parry) have just finished a project aimed to decrease fatigue through regular activity. We developed a programme that used a coaching style to help participants set goals and make plans to change how active they were. Seven out of the eight people who took part in this programme had less fatigue after the programme and all felt they'd learnt a lot about fatigue during the programme that helped them manage fatigue more effectively.

One surprising finding was how little participants knew about fatigue despite having a condition where more than 70% of people have significant ongoing fatigue. Participants found that taking part in the programme helped them understand a lot more about fatigue and they developed ways to manage it better. They were clear that it would have been helpful if they had learnt this knowledge earlier in their recovery process. In response, we developed a simple information sheet about fatigue, how to be active when you have fatigue and other tips to manage fatigue. We plan to make this written information available as a handout and also on the GBS Support Group website https://gbsnz.org.nz/ but believe there is scope to produce this information in different formats and also extend the information.

We are looking for a design student interested in storytelling, illustration and video editing to produce one or more video modules as an alternate format to the basic information we’ve already developed. There is scope to also extend the information through interviewing key informants (e.g. participants and advisory group members from the original study, members of the GBS support group). The video(s) produced would be housed on the GBS Support Group website.

The specific parameters of the study will be finalised in collaboration with the GBS Support Group, supervisors and advisors. This summer studentship is in collaboration with Centre for Person Centred Research.

Past Summer Student Projects

Below are projects by summer students who have worked with us previously. Several of these projects have gone on to win or become finalists in the Best Design Awards.