Social shaping of technology, the concept of appropriation and the future of ICT in Health Care

Last Monday, 22^nd of March, we had a very interesting talk Cristiano Storni, how is undertaking a post-doc at the Interaction Design Centre (ICD) in University of Limerick. He was speaking to us about the Health Care Sector, which specifically focused on patients with chronic illnesses, particularly diabetics. He spoke at the start of the talk about the Social Shaping of Technology Theory and its application in the Health Care Industry. He spoke about the current hierarchical system that is present in the Health Care system, where specialised doctors and surgeons are seen at the top level and patients are seen at the bottom level of the system. This is dangerous as it creates conflict between chronically sick people and doctors. The system currently being employed by some medical practices, where doctors give orders to patients (traditional practice) must stop as patient and doctor must work in together.

He also spoke about breaking the traditional way of looking at the medical profession, and stated that we have to stop looking at the traditional ways of looking at the body as a machine, at patients as a problems to fix, at data and trying to solve it in a one dimensional way. We must take a more holistic approach, not only examine the disease but rather try and understand the patient. Changes need to be made in the way the practice views things, from the perspective of the patient rather than the disease.

There has been a dehumanising approach when visiting the doctors, where patients are seen as data and doctors are seen as dispensers. In this culture, many people will not ask their doctors on how to deal with the disease, but will turn to other suffers of the ailment, support groups etc..

For product design, it poses huge challenges for the designer, as it is not about decreasing the buttons or making it more usable. It goes deeper than that, in understand and making something that first and foremost understands the patient, their requirements, their wants, while also delivering the correct medicine to correct the disease.

This topic is of great interest to be and it resonated some of the aspects I spoke about in my seminar on the 1^st of March. The current system, as Cristiano highlighted, is not working for those suffering with chronic patient illnesses. In my life personally, this is very true for my uncle who suffers for the past 10 years with diabetes, hypothyroidism and high blood pressure. Because of his age, family history and the degree of severity, he visits the doctors surgery once a month for a check up. He has attended support groups for these illnesses, all of which he sourced himself. He has never once been asked or would feel comfortable discussing how he is being affected by taking 4 tablets per day, how he had to change his lifestyle, his eating habits etc. with his doctor. He is so disconnected from the patient doctor relationship that he never requests to see the same doctor during his monthly visits. When I asked him recently about his view on doctors he told me that “I go in, get my check up done, get my prescription and goes away and that’s the way I want it”. He said that he is not there to chat or get to know the doctor; he is not there on a personal capacity

I really became interested in this topic discussed but questioned how achievable this would be in the “real world”. I did a bit of searching on the topic and found anlink to Experience based design approach which is centred around designing a better healthcare services. This system is being developed by the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement as a way of improving the health care service by making patients feel safer, happier and more valued and making doctors and nurses more positive, rewarded and empowered.
But I really question how easy this is to employ, particularly in this economic climate where doctors and nurses hours are being cut, money is not being provided to expand and redevelop hospitals and where there is reduced confidence in the health care sector. Another factor that needs to be considered is the different approaches and personalities of doctors and patients and how easy it could be change their behaviour. And how can this change be achieved? Where does it start? Ideally I think if it could be achieved it would of great benefit to patient and doctor by saving time and saving lives but I question how this could be achieved

On/Off: Can South Koreans survive without the web?

Today I came across a news report in BBC News online edition “On/Off: Can South Koreans survive without the web?” link here, which reported the story of two families, living in the country which considered the world’s most wired society, who decided to live without the internet for one week. South Korea has the fastest average broadband speed in the world and were schoolchildren are asked to file their homework assignments online, were most TV channels are wired to homes over the internet and were their e-commerce market reached more than $600bn per year. It reports about their struggles and difficulties as well as the positive experiences they found like spending more time with each other, reading more books, playing board games and having meals together. Even after all these positive experiences, the articles concludes on this note by one of the family members
"Lose the internet for another seven days? It's a real 'No thank you,' I'm afraid. I don't want to go through this again."

This article really made me think about my internet use. On average, I spend at minimum six hours of everyday online for which I usually use it for researching, Facebook, youtube (and such like sites) and tutorial websites like Lynda.com. Since starting college, the longest break I have had from the internet has been five days, which occurred over the Christmas holidays. How difficult would I have found this exercise? How would I carry out research for college projects? How would I communicate with people without the use of Facebook and email? What would happen if I needed to query a feature or setting in a software package like photoshop? How would I find out directions without Google maps? How would I carry out module assignment on Moodle without the internet?
We, as a society, have come to rely so much on the internet to carry out daily activities. While the internet has contributed greatly to a more knowledgeable society are we dismissing other important contributors of knowledge like our family members, our work colleagues, our neighbours, our community members, our lectures in college. Have we lost the important face to face relationship and communication skills?
As an exercise for myself I will try to not use the internet for one week after finishing my masters to try and see how difficult life would be without the Internet.

What does it mean to me to be a designer?

What does it mean to me to be a designer?

This is one of the most difficult thing that I have ever had to write as I find it very difficult to express. When I started writing this, I decided to Google “definitions of a designer”. From this I found many definitions of what a designer is, which I found to differ greatly from different disciples. For me, coming from a product design background, a quote from the Design Institute of Australia that I related greatly to was the following
“A designer is a business professional who develops solutions to commercial needs that require the balancing of technical, commercial, human and aesthetic requirements.”
But on closer though, this quote is lacking something vital, the user!

Then I decided to examine ‘who is the designer’ and ‘what is the distinguishable factors that makes someone a designer’. Is the programmer, who is given a list of steps that the company want to include in a device designing? Is the graphic designer, who is told by the customer what colour and shape they want their logo designing? Is the toolmaker, who is given a AutoCAD drawing by the product designer to make designing? Is the craftsman who is making pottery designing? Is the user designing when the decide what features to use in the system or product or when the modify their system e.g. change the skin on their phone, add a youtube clip to their Facebook page?

During this month a article was written in Design Reviver “So you call yourself a Designer?” link here , where the author discusses how some people call themselves a designer because they have a computer, have Adobe Photoshop and they had some spare time to learn and how this is far from what we needed an what is a designer. He speaks about a designer a being a very complex and knowledgeable person who has “ critical thinking skills, understanding of design principals, knowledge of grid systems, typography and much more.” He speaks about the importance of critical thinking as being fundamental in a designer so a to develop design that has meaning rather than just decoration.

So from this inspirational article I started thinking about what I personally means to me to be a designer. And to be honest I really not exactly sure! With every major experience, I change my view on what a it means to me to be a designer.

When I was a young girl, I was encouraged to paint and draw as my family saw that I had a talent in that area. I didn’t particularly enjoy the method I was being taught, which was sit down, put a bowl of fruit in front of me and start drawing or painting. What I did enjoy was making and fixing things around the house and taking things apart to see how they worked. What it meant for me to be a designer at that age was merge artistic and mechanical skills to produce a beautiful design.
I then went to college and studied product design and technology, which focused on aesthetic design, ergonomics, model-making, usability, material science and manufacturing design. I highly enjoyed projects which focused on aesthetic design, ergonomics and usability. At the end of my undergraduate education, what it meant for me to be a designer was to have the ability to blend form with function so as to create beautiful products that help people in their everyday lives.
When I finished my undergraduate course, I worked as a product, packaging and graphic designer in a in-house product design firm in Shannon in Co. Clare. Here I worked for 18 months in a company that designed, manufactures and packaged low cost household products. The company was in formation for only a few years so money was tight so pressure was on to design things as quick as possible. I was the only designer in the company for the majority of the time, with an accountant and two toolmakers being my other work colleges. Sometimes this caused a few problems during some of the design phases as it was sometimes difficult to illustrate the value of spending time and money on improving the aesthetics and understanding of the user. For me during that stage of my life, what it meant to be a designer was to be a business professional who develops a marketable solution that attracts the customer to purchase.
And now, as a masters student in Interactive Media, where we focus greatly on understand the user and capturing the best experience in a design, for me now, to be a designers means that I make an impact on lives, on communities and on individuals. A designer gives back to the everyday person, they see the possibilities where none were seen before. A designer emphasises, listens and understands.

Usability is no longer enough - Seminar

Last Monday, the 1st of March, the first day of Spring, our group presented the topic "Interface Usability, the Designer and User" for the Principals of Interactive Media Seminar. The three of us, Aladdin, Sophie and myself, each decided on a section within this topic to discuss that directly related to our dissertation proposal. I spoke about "Usability is no longer enough" where I discussed this new idea of the power of Emotion and Empathy as ways of relating to the end user and designing more effective solutions. I spoke about the need for changing our way of approaching design, to break away from the norms of design and to thinking outside the box. It was for me one of the most interesting topics that I have ever researched or spoken. I feel quite strong about this topic as I feel from my experience in industry that there is a real need to understand the user in a more holistic view so as to design products or services that add "real" meaning to peoples lives. There are so many products and designs on the market that are designed from a marketing perspective without understanding the user, where companies main aim is to get the user to buy your product or sign up to your website. If interested in finding out more of what I have being discussing above please click here