Is this what going blind feels like?
During physical education class in fifth grade I thought I was going blind. From one second to the next, I couldn’t see my friend’s face anymore. I could still hear her talking but some weird lights started appearing in front of my eyes which followed my gaze everywhere I looked and were blocking my sight. They made me feel nauseous and I started panicking. “I can’t see you anymore.” was all I was able to say in that moment. My friend first was confused, then scared and everyone started panicking. I had to sit down and drink water but while everyone was asking me questions I couldn’t answer I realized that even closing my eyes made me feel sick and disoriented. I lost my ability to speak, even think in that moment and could barely express what I was physically and emotionally going through. My mother had to pick me up from school and I spent the rest of that day in pain lying in bed after the “scary lights” and a tremendous head pain had kicked in. Every stimuli even a weak source of light or any kind of noise felt like it directly hurt my brain. I had never felt this senstive and concious of my surroundings. I could only lay in my dark room, cry, vomit and wait for the torture to stop. My mom wasn’t suprised to hear what had happened to me at all but obviously seemed very concerned. This was the day I first heard about migraine. What I had just experienced was called a migraine attack and I am not the first person in my family to suffer from it. My mother, my father and grandmother were affected by them as well – and mine had started at ten years old. And this wouldn’t be the last one to appear out of nowhere.
This was a rather personal story to dive into this topic but as every person describes their suffering from this disease in a different way, I thought it could give an insight into what it feels like to experience a migraine attack (at least how I do).
What is migraine and how many people are affected?
According to the Medical Univertsity of Vienna (2024) one million people in Austria suffer from migraine. It is a primary headache disorder which lasts about 4 to 72 hours. What I experienced with the strange flashing lights is a typical symptom of a certain type of migraine known as “migraine with aura”. Aura referring to the visual elements such as flashes of light, blind spots, zigzag patterns, blurred vision, or seeing spots and wavy lines. In my case I would describe them as blind spots that block your sight and increase so much that you can’t see what is in front of you anymore. The intense sensitivity to light and noises is called photo- and phonofobia. The fact that I couldn’t speak and struggled to find words is also a side-effect of experiencing aura. It can lead to the person loosing their speech and just mumbling or struggling to form a whole sentence. After reading more about this disease I learned that most of my symtoms and the different phases of my attack were already known in science and a pretty typical case.
Lack of awareness and medical treatment
Although lots of people suffer from migraine with or without aura, the neurological disease still remains a topic the majority of society doesn’t know or talk about enough. The lack of awareness and no access to proper treatment is what can lead to frustration and even anxiety or depression. In a world where this disease is treated as a simple headache (don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean that a headache can’t be painful) we need to stop avoiding talking about certain diseases only because it makes us feel unconformtable start being curious instead.
Unfortunately, many patients suffering from headache disorders never receive an appropriate diagnosis and don’t have access to treatment or medications. Receiving an appointment with a neurologist is almost hopeless nowadays.
The cause of migraine attacks is still unkown but is usually treated with specific medication but also by following a healthy diet and regular exercise schedule, staying hydrated and using a migraine headache calender to identify possible triggers.
Relevance for design
But in what way does migraine relate to design? Well, currently there are several migraine tracking-apps in the Google Play Store and Apple Store. Most of these apps are free and their goal is to track details about migraine attacks e.g. the intensity of the migraine so that the user can identify their individual triggers and patterns such as weather changes, sleep problems, caffeine and alcohol intake, etc. Users are supposed to track their daily habits to receive an overview of the disorder’s frequency and eventually improve their understanding of the disease.
Personal motivation
As my neurologist has recommended to keep track of my migraine attacks and recommended an app from the pain clinic in Kiel to use it as a “headache diary” I have made experience with different applications over the years. In the following posts I would like to dive into those experiences and analayze them. From a design point of view but also from the perspective of the targeted user group there are several aspects I perceived that should be improved and tested! I believe that combining both of these perspectives and talking to experts (neurologists, psychologists and patients) could be helpful to create a meaningful solution that is tailored to the user’s needs.
My approach
- Initial resarch to gain an essential understanding of the disease and it’s characteristics
- What is the status quo in science? (cause, treatment,…)
- Identify problems considering all pain points e.g. medical treatment and health system
- Analyze migraine apps for a state of the art research
- Ideate possible solution to found problems
- Online survey
References
- Medical University of Vienna. (2024, May 7). One million people in Austria affected by migraine.
https://www.meduniwien.ac.at/web/en/ueber-uns/news/2024/news-im-mai-2024/one-million-
people-in-austria-affected-by-migraine/
- World Health Organization. (2024, March 5). Migraine and other headache disorders. Retrieved October 19, 2025, from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/headache-disorders