48 research outputs found
Users and computers: A contextual approach to design of computer artifacts
This article contains a presentation and overview of the papers that I have submitted for the degree doctor scientiarum (dr. scient.).
The introduction relates the subject matter of the submitted papers to current discussions in computer science. Section two gives a brief account of the research area in question, how it has developed over the last 25 year~, and its current status.
Section three presents and discusses the results structured according to the frame of reference given in section two. For each sub-area the central issues are introduced. Then the results obtained are presented; the practical as well as the theoretical. Finally, a short comparison and evaluation in relation to relevant literature is made.
Section four contains a short discussion of the methods used, and section five presents ideas for future research
Bridging the Gap Between Politics and Techniques: On the next practices of participatory design
This paper discusses how we in the participatory design (PD) research community may contribute to the evolution of ICT design1 practices into something that is much more attuned to people using ICT and to their interests. The main idea is that to do so we need to focus more on issues in the gap between politics and techniques, e.g., project funding, types of users and of use settings, the role of companies and of Intellectual Property Rights and the types of projects we work on. The paper presents material illustrating that impor- tant changes are going on in the dimensions outlined by these issues and argues that these changes create important, new opportunities for PD to contribute to the ânext practicesâ of ICT designâas well as serious problems. Thus to exploit these new opportunities we need to improve our understanding of the issues involved and to develop new ways of taking them into account when we design and do research projects
On Creating and Sustaining Alternatives: The case of Danish Telehealth
This paper presents and discusses an initiative aimed at creating direct and long lasting influence on the use and development of telemedicine and telehealth by healthcare professionals, patients and citizens. The initiative draws on ideas, insights, and lessons learned from Participatory Design (PD) as well as from innovation theory and software ecosystems. Last, but not least, the ongoing debate on public finances/economy versus tax evasion by major private companies has been an important element in shaping the vision and creating support for the initiative. This vision is about democratic control, about structures for sustaining such control beyond initial design and imple- mentation and about continued development through Participatory Design projects. We see the âmiddle elementâ, the structures for sustaining democratic control beyond initial design and implementation as the most important and novel contribution of the paper
Self-Care Technologies in HCI: Trends, Tensions, and Opportunities
Many studies show that self-care technologies can support patients with chronic conditions and their carers in understanding the ill body and increasing control of their condition. However, many of these studies have largely privileged a medical perspective and thus overlooked how patients and carers integrate self-care into their daily lives and mediate their conditions through technology. In this review, we focus on how patients and carers use and experience self-care technology through a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) lens. We analyse studies of self-care published in key HCI journals and conferences using the Grounded Theory Literature Review (GTLR) method and identify research trends and design tensions. We then draw out opportunities for advancing HCI research in self-care, namely, focusing further on patients' everyday life experience, considering existing collaborations in self-care, and increasing the influence on medical research and practice around self-care technology
Writing PD: accounting for socially-engaged research
As participants in participatory process, PD academics report on the practices and outcomes of their work and thereby shape what is known of individual projects and the wider field of participatory design. At present, there is a dominant form for this reporting, led by academic publishing models. Yet, the politics of describing others has received little discussion. Our field brings diverging sensibilities to co-design, conducting experiments and asking what participation means in different contexts. How do we match this ingenuity in designing with ingenuity of reporting? Should designers, researchers and other participants all be writing up participatory work, using more novel and tailored approaches? Should we write more open and playful collaborative texts? Within some academic discourse, considerable value is placed on reflexivity, positionality, inclusivity and auto-ethnography as part of reflecting. Yet, PD spends no time in discussing its written outputs. Drawing on the results of a PDCâ16 workshop, I encourage us to challenge this silence and discuss âWriting PDâ
Proceedings of Designing Self-care for Everyday Life. Workshop in conjunction with NordiCHI 2014, 27th October.
Managing chronic conditions can be challenging. People in such conditions, and the people around them, have to, for example: deal with symptoms, adapt to the resulting disability, manage emotions, and change habits to keep the condition under control. Self-care technologies have the potential to support self-care, however they often disregard the complexity of the settings in which they are used and fail to become integrated in everyday life.The present collection of papers forms the Proceedings of the Workshop âDesigning Selfcare for Everyday Lifeâ conducted last October 27th, 2014 in Helsinki, where 14 participants from 7 different countries spent the day discussing how to design self-care technologies that are in harmony with peopleâs everyday life. During the morning, discussions were driven by poster presentations focused on the participantsâ work. In the afternoon, we engaged in aparticipatory design exercise focused on the self-care of Parkinsonâs disease. Our discussions were driven by the experience of two people living with Parkinsonâs that participated in our workshop. At the end of the exercise, each group presented the different insights, concepts and problems that each patient experiences in their everyday life with the disease. Last, we all engaged in a broader discussion with a mapping exercise of issues and challenges in relation to self-care.The contributions featured in the proceedings have been peer-reviewed by the members of the Workshop Program Committee and selected on the basis of their quality, alignment with the workshop theme, and the extent (and diversity) of their backgrounds in design. They express points of view of researchers from both Academia and Industry and provide relevant insights in the design and development use of technologies for self-care.We want to thank all the participants and co-authors for contributing to the Workshop. We are particularly grateful to the two patients, members of the Finnish Parkinsonâs Association, who accepted to participate in the workshop and enabled researchers to get aperspective on the challenges of their lives. We also want to thank all the Programme Committee members for all their work during the reviewing process as well as the organisers of NordiCHI 2014 for providing useful facilities
Evaluation of Prototypes and the Problem of Possible Futures
There is a blind spot in HCIâs evaluation methodology: we rarely consider the implications of the fact that a prototype can never be fully evaluated in a study. A prototype under study exists firmly in the present world, in the circumstances created in the study, but its real context of use is a partially unknown future state of affairs. This presentâfuture gap is implicit in any evaluation of prototypes, be they usability tests, controlled experiments, or field trials. A carelessly designed evaluation may inadvertently evaluate the wrong futures, contexts, or user groups, thereby leading to false conclusions and expensive design failures. The essay analyses evaluation methodology from this perspective, illuminating how to mitigate the presentâfuture gap.Peer reviewe