Distributed User-Generated Card Based Co-Design:A Case-Study

status: publishe

Human Agency in Self-Management Tools

Self-management tools are increasingly used to empower patients with chronic conditions to monitor their condition and treatment. As these tools put responsibility with patients, it is important to better understand how patients adopt these tools and how their context influences this adoption. To this end, we study the adoption of a self-management application (HeartMan) for patients with heart failure. Using a socio-technical framework of non-functional aspects of home-based healthcare technology we aim to integrate their context and the help they receive from informal caregivers. We interviewed 10 patients after using the system. Our results show that although the system increased patients’ knowledge about healthy diet, encouraged them to be more physically active, and made some patients feel more aware of their health, it did not allow for much flexibility regarding the interface and interactions with the system. As such the system exercises agency over the patient rather than empowering them. More flexibility regarding how patients can use the system could empower them to manage their condition and treatment

Situated learning through intergenerational play between older adults and undergraduates

Abstract This study is grounded in a social-cultural framework that embeds learning in social activities, mediated by cultural tools and occurring through guided participation in the social practice of a particular community. It uses conversation analysis as a tool to examine the structures of the talk-in-interaction of naturally occurring conversations between 11 pairs of older adult (aged between 65 and 92) and undergraduates (aged between 18 and 25) during a 6-week social practice of intergenerational digital gameplay. The purpose is to demonstrate how older adults adapt to and make sense of collaborative gaming activities through guided participation. The features of minimum gap and overlap, even conversational inputs, and orientation to one another’s turns indicate interactional connection between older adults and younger people. Adjacency pairs in the form of question-answer and self-initiated other-repairs are the situated use of social resources afforded by the intergenerational interaction. It is through these two main means of interaction that younger players offer immediate feedback and explanation to guide older adults to engage in the collaborative play and develop understanding of unfolding concepts and phenomena