Salty Lives uses a design anthropology approach to critically examine emerging trends in health and data, and to articulate alternative trajectories. It explores how design might be applied to reimagine the cultures, institutions and systems that shape our world. Salty Lives is thus an inquiry into both how we might live, and how we might design.

As a result, I proposed Compass - a concept for a mobile app. Compass would allow people with cystic fibrosis to get in touch with others who live with similar health challenges using medical data. A phone call provides a direct, personal, but non-committal way of contact. Compass aims to bridge the gap between medical and measurable data, patient activism, and research - and the more human layer of well-being, sensemaking and wayfinding through storytelling and personal contact. It does not intend to provide answers, but shows possible trajectories, challenges what might be seen as inevitable or impossible, and opens up discussions. This applies to living with CF, as well as to broader issues of sharing medical data, of how health knowledge is defined and controlled, and what it means for quality of life.