Gabby Morris
A creative, designer, researcher and maker. Designing the relatable as well as tangible, fun as well as the important. Gabby moves with ease between product, speculative, service and experience design. With a focus on creating new experiences that empower people, are more equitable and make us think and feel something new. This interdisciplinary approach blends design, research and making as a tool for positive impact and change.
Gabby’s work spans food, health, ceramics and cultural change to develop outcomes for people to experience new ways of living. Gabby is endlessly curious about people’s feelings, tastes, ideas, language, cultures, and how things work. Bringing intuition and a methodical approach to research, she is keen to show insights, connections and relationships.
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Dish the Dirt
Transitioning to a new food culture for Scotland through experience design
Dish the Dirt is a pop-up multi-sensory tasting experience connecting the food we eat to the land it is grown in. Using a range of techniques such as sound, smell, touch and taste in the experience, along with bespoke ceramics for different sensory platings, people are encouraged to connect their dinner and the land it came from. Diners are provoked to taste, think, and feel something different about the value of high-quality, nutrient-dense soil and how it impacts their food.
Using experience design techniques and gastrophysic science for the senses around food. Dish the Dirt offers a different way to connect people to the systemic problems of the food system and soil degradation. Rather than a workshop or lecture, Dish the Dirt taps into people’s emotions and creates a visceral experience that means they develop memories or think and feel something different when eating and experiencing soil.
“I was shocked by how little knowledge I had of the soil, how little I felt connected to something that I now know is so significant. I will be thinking about this when buying food in the future” – Eve, Diner at Dish the Dirt Prototype
Dish the Dirt is not necessarily about point blank learning; it is about subtle changes to the way people think and how they connect themselves to the environmental issues and the system that needs changing. This is derived from research both for this project and drawing on research from my dissertation. My research showed that people don’t want to feel bad when learning about these issues, particularly around food.
“Having the soil at the experience really changed it for me. I always thought Organic was a buzzword until I actually saw it! I could see the impact it might have on my food!” – Matthew, Diner at Dish the Dirt Prototype
To help people think about how their food choices impact the land in Scotland, the environment in Scotland, and their health, Dish the Dirt connects people to the emotional elements of these things. Showing food and soil side-by-side in a completely innovative way, using hand-made earth derived ceramics to change the way we eat and bringing together producers, consumers, farmers and citizens to have conversations around the table.
Why is Dish the Dirt needed; we are losing our soils at an alarming rate, and our soils are nutrient deficient and depleted. Dish the Dirt aims to change the value of food and land and make people more aware of the need to protect and value them both. Not a workshop, but a delightful experience that people can enjoy and explore the incredible importance of soil and food in Scotland.
Remedi
A speculative health device for 2031
It is 2031, and our world is in flux and chaos where systems are changing, and people are disrupting old societal structures, organisations, and top-down approaches to health and care. People share knowledge, systems are interconnected, and the world is full of complexities and uncertainties. Care systems have failed people, and people have chosen to care for themselves. There is a growing movement toward preventative self-care.
Remedi is a speculative service designed to help citizens engage in preventative care within their communities locally and globally. The device aids users to understand the history and science around medicines with the aim of highlighting the influence of big pharma, and potential side effects from pharmaceuticals, to enable people to make an informed choice. Health systems often just offer medications to treat symptoms rather than investigating the underlying health issues and concentrating on those.
“Doctors like diagnoses, society expects treatment. We then get the over-medicalisation of non-medical problems.” – Rob Jones, Consultant
Remedi offers alternatives in the form of natural medicines, lifestyle changes and a community of support. Users can scan everything from cough syrup to prescribed medications. Remedi supports people in connecting the dots between their health and medication and shows them ways of changing their lifestyle to reverse their illness.
The impact of Remedi could be huge for health systems in reducing costs and empowering citizens to make better choices to participate in their own health outcomes. It could lower government spending on pharmaceuticals and free up GP time, it could even have an environmental impact in lowering the use of environmentally harmful medications.
“Remedi is great, it is unbelievable what is sold that doesn’t work, would be great to have something to solve that.” – Kate G – GP
Balance of Care
The ‘Balance of Future Care’ team focused on researching a future world centred around people and care. We started off our research by looking at past, present, and future trends and then understanding care throughout time up to 2050. Our team future world exhibit showcases our findings.
By 2031, we believe the world will be in a more complex and chaotic state than today. Our future world is one of post-normalcy and chaos.
Using the future world exhibit, participants have to make decisions based on limited resources about their hopes, desires, and care needs. Based on the theories of a causal loop, participants’ decisions will ultimately decide their final future world outcome. Our exhibit is there to show the delicate balance between our choices and their effects on the future of care.
Our exhibit could be a decision-making tool for practitioners working in care and citizens understanding different care needs.
