Signe Bek’s Major Project – Our Trans Journey

Our Trans Journey

A tangible conversation tool to facilitate communication, knowledge sharing and acceptance.

Our Trans Journey’ is an innovative service start-up for transgender people and partners in the United Kingdom. The service aims to create and optimise value in the transition journey for partners of trans people focusing on the phase of social transition.

The transgender transition journey is complex, stressful and emotionally ambivalent. The transition journey often focuses solely on the trans person. However, there is often a crucial additional stakeholder involved that the external network and service providers tend to forget: the partner. A partner supports the trans person but is also trying to navigate the complex transition journey. Partners encounter pain points such as anger and a lack of acceptance, a limited vocabulary, loneliness, grief, abuse, some split up – and others become the couple’s communicator or even defender. The lack of acceptance and ‘normalisation’ (this wording was suggested by research and design participants) around being transgender exists on a societal and on an individual level. The lack of acceptance and ‘normalisation’ are symptoms of a core problem concerning a lack of knowledge, understanding and limited vocabulary.

The Empathy Puzzle is a playful and tangible conversational tool provided by ‘Our Trans Journey’. The puzzle caters to user values and needs: enabling communication and resource sharing; involving tangible touchpoints; offering temporal narratives without being linear; being empathic and playful; bridging between the trans minority and the rest of society. The Empathy Puzzle facilitates empathic and playful conversation between trans people and additional stakeholders.

Signe’s Email: Signe.a.bek@gmail.com
Signe’s Website: Signebek.com