Hi Everyone,
I am a communication designer from Northumbria University who is conducting research into Life Story Books. The research has been motivated by my own experiences as an adopter, as well as those of all the wonderful friends I have made over the last two years on our adoption journey.
I was surprised by quite how bad our life story book was, it was littered with inaccuracies, wasn't age-appropriate, was visually confusing with lots of random pixelated clip arts and watermarks. I could go on. The book is really important and so why are they not given more care and attention?
As a designer, I found it incredibly frustrating. In my research, I am working with children's illustrators, authors and graphic designers to learn about how we might make life story books better.
To start e project I want to learn about adopters experiences and what they feel their child and family needs from a life story book. What did you feel was good and bad about your book? Have you remade your book, what did you do differently? How do you and your child use this in daily life? I believe knowing about this can help us make better life story books.
Anyway. Feel free to share your experiences here, or ask questions. For those who are interested in taking part in an interview to help us with the project I more information and a recruitment survey here:
northumbria.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/life-story-book-design
For those selected to take part, we have £20 Amazon vouchers as a thank you for your time.
Thanks for listening.