I’m Grace Quantock, a psychotherapeutic counsellor, writer and researcher.

I’m a new talent fellow with South West Creative Technology Network in data and I am researching the impact of trauma in technology.

I’m looking at how what we can’t see shapes our designs and our users’ experiences. 

Trauma can be carried unconsciously and can be impacting our data gathering because we aren’t seeing its invisible presence but we can chart its impact and this skews results.

If we want to engage audiences we have to take trauma into account. 

For example, play contains an essential element of uncertainty to allow the potential that’s so integral to imaginative play. But trauma survivors often cannot bear such uncertainty and respond to it as a threat.

I am researching how creatives and technological culture makers can frame the delivery of their outputs to responsively mediate individual’s data processing, particularly people with significant trauma loads who have marginalised or oppressed identities. 

I’m asking how creative technologists can  work in a trauma informed way and titrate data delivery in a way that doesn’t increase the user’s trauma load? 

That’s what I’m exploring in my Traumula Programme and workshop to support digital designers and creative technologists to figure out how trauma and wellbeing awareness sits alongside user experience research work streams. 

Engagement and playfulness require consent and capacity, in considering trauma in design, we are taking responsibility for our part in creating space for possibility in our work and our communities. 

I’m currently seeking organisations to beta test my Traumula Workshop with, if you are interested, please fill out the Typeform here.

Or contact me at grace AT gracequantock.com and we can set up a call to see if we are a good fit.

For us humans…as long as the mind is defending itself against invisible assaults, our closest bonds are threatened, along with out ability to imagine, plan, play, learn”

– Van de Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score

Learn more about the Traumula and my research here: