Anne Marie Kanstrup

Selecting and evoking innovators: combining democracy and creativity

The practical undertaking of selecting users to work as innovators and of evoking their creative potential is crucial, but underexposed in the literature on user involvement in design. This paper reports findings from a recent case of user-driven innovation, the FEEDBACK-project, where the authors prepared for and conducted selection of and collaboration with innovators. The outcome was successful in the sense that the innovators produced excellent foundation for conceptual interaction design by creating mock-ups and explanations incarnating their preferences, attitudes and habits. By referring to theories of learning we try to explain how our way of working with selection and evoking of innovators has contributed to this positive result and how our approach to user-driven innovation can be regarded as a way to combine democracy and creativity in design.

Making chocolate-covered broccoli: designing a mobile learning game about food for young people with diabetes

Assessing the amount of carbohydrates in their food is central for people with diabetes mellitus on intensive insulin therapy. This can be a challenging task for adults, but it is particularly so for young people since being a teenager takes attention from disease management. Learning happens in everyday life, but formal diabetes education is also considered an important aspect of diabetes self-management. In a case study we wanted to investigate how, and to which extent, to add motivation (chocolate) to learning (broccoli) by applying participatory design methods in the development of a mobile game about carbohydrate counting. This paper presents the design process and the resulting prototype. It concludes with challenges and opportunities for design of digital learning systems for children and adolescents addressing the carbohydrate counting issue.

A Living Laboratory Exploring Mobile Support for Everyday Life with Diabetes

The paper presents the set up of a Living Laboratory in a city of North Denmark exploring mobile support for everyday life with diabetes. Background and definitions of the living lab method is presented together with descriptions of the technical setup, applications and explorations. The living lab method was practiced over two iterations—one in 2008 and one in 2009. 17 diabetes families, 9 service providers, researchers and ICT-consultants has participated in the activities. The results present how the living lab method provides an open platform for exploring technology in naturalistic settings combined with controlled activities, technical set up, support and data collection. The meetings of users, researchers, developers, and service providers in the living lab showed how living labs are an open platform supporting interactive learning among participants on technological innovations. The living lab method as combined here with a user-driven approach is an example of how designers can carry out and gain from working with people as co-creators in design projects.

IT-services for everyday life with diabetes: learning design, community design, inclusive design

The paper presents three directions for design of IT-services supporting everyday living with the chronic illness diabetes.

Participatory design in an era of participation

This special issue on participatory design in an era of participation presents emerging topics and discussions from the thirteenth Participatory Design Conference (PDC), held at Aarhus University in August 2016. The PDC 2016 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Participatory Design conference series, which began in 1990 with the first biannual conference in Seattle. Since then, the PDC conferences have continued to bring together a multidisciplinary, international community of researchers and practitioners around issues of cooperative design. The theme for the 2016 PDC conference was ‘Participatory Design in an Era of Participation’. Critical and constructive discussions were invited on the values, characteristics, politics and future practices of participatory design in an era in which participation has now become pervasive (Bossen, Smith, Kanstrup, McDonnell, et al. ‘PDC 16, Volume 1,’ 2016; Bossen, Smith, Kanstrup, Huybrechts, et al. ‘PDC 16, Volume 2,’ 2016). All five contributions in this special issue address both core and emerging topics in participatory design research. All take their starting-point in a fundamental research interest in the design and research of information and communication technology (ICT), and more broadly in technologies in general in which various kinds of stakeholder are involved. Exploring participation in the research and design of ICT has been central to participatory design since this research community first began to emerge in the early 1990s (Greenbaum and Kyng 1991; Schuler and Namioka 1993). Central to the pursuit of how to involve end-users in the development of ICT were core ideals of democracy that were rooted in the North American and Scandinavian political landscapes of the time as these underwent fundamental change. In the early Scandinavian research projects, this was evidenced in a series of projects that involved workers and fought for workers’ rights to participate in the development of technology at their workplaces (Bjerknes et al. 1987; Ehn 1988). This political attention has remained a characteristic of PDC ever since, though in various forms and sometimes at much weaker intensity, and complemented by pragmatic and ethical arguments for involving users in design. Participatory design is rooted in a concern for located accountabilities in technology design (Suchman 2002) and in values stating that those who will be affected by new technology have a legitimate reason to be involved in its design (Kensing and Blomberg 1998). In early participatory design research, involving users in technology design was new, provoking, and challenging because establishing a space in which researchers, software enterprises, managers and end-users could meet, exchange ideas and learn from one another required the development of new techniques and methods for scaffolding participatory processes and interactions. This focus on approaches to establish mutual learning among the various stakeholders has been a core strand of research in participatory design ever since the first conference. Participatory approaches and concepts continue to be developed and critically researched across a very broad range of application domains, even as new disciplines addressing user involvement change the landscape in which participation in design unfolds (Halskov and Hansen 2015; Sanders and Stappers 2008). For a recent overview of participatory design, see Simonsen and Robertson (2013). In the last decade, ‘participation’ has become popular across industry and public administration as a way to better connect to customers and publics. The growth of the internet and

The assumed relation between occupation and inequality in health

Abstract Background: Occupational science and therapy scholars have argued that research on inequality in health is needed. Simultaneously, a knowledge gap between how to understand and take action on health inequalities exists in occupational science and therapy. Objective: To identify how inequality in health, high-risk areas of health, and engagement in health for low-income adult citizens have been described and conceptualized in contemporary occupational science and therapy literature. Material and methods: A structured literature review of 37 publications in occupational science and therapy literature, published from 2004 to 2014. Findings: The review revealed several descriptions and conceptualizations based on environmental, social, cultural, historical, and personal perspectives on occupation and already existing occupational science concepts. However, these descriptions were mainly based on assumptions regarding the relation between occupation and inequality in health, and statements on the need to explore this relation. Conclusion: Basic theory and reasoning, as well as empirical studies, on inequality in health are missing in occupational science and therapy. Based on the findings and theoretical trends, the authors suggest a transactional perspective on occupation is a possible frame for understanding inequality in health and related issues.

Emotions on diabetes: a design case of user mock-ups by young people living with diabetes

This paper reports a design research case on mobile learning technology for children and teenagers living with the chronic illness diabetes. A central focus in the design process was to understand the young peoples perspective on their chronic illness and on mobile technology support. Towards this end, a design workshop was facilitated to promote the articulation of their emotions towards design. This presentation outlines this design activity and discusses the results of 12 mock-ups created by a group of young people living with diabetes. The analysis and reflections of the user mock-ups highlight three aspects related to their identity of self, the burden of being young with a chronic illness, and the need to feel connected and safe in a society generally unaware of or uninformed about their illness.

Designed by End Users: Meanings of Technology in the Case of Everyday Life with Diabetes

This paper presents end users’ ability to work across boundaries in design. The point of departure is a research project in which 60 end users participated as co-designers of ICT to support their everyday lives with the chronic illness diabetes. In additional to a series of digital co-designs, 22 mock-ups designed by the end users emerged from the project. These mock-ups/end-user designs are analyzed, with a focus on boundaries. This design case presents end users’ ability to create continuities across boundaries through their willingness to step into the unknown territory of ICT design and through their fusion of meanings of technology, diabetes, and everyday life experience in their designs. The paper concludes with reflections on engagement in boundary relations and call for embracing end users’ contributions to design by focusing on horizontal and hybrid cooperations.

Human Factors in the Large: Experiences from Denmark, Finland and Canada in Moving Towards Regional and National Evaluations of Health Information System Usability

OBJECTIVES The objective of this paper is to explore approaches to understanding the usability of health information systems at regional and national levels. METHODS Several different methods are discussed in case studies from Denmark, Finland and Canada. They range from small scale qualitative studies involving usability testing of systems to larger scale national level questionnaire studies aimed at assessing the use and usability of health information systems by entire groups of health professionals. RESULTS It was found that regional and national usability studies can complement smaller scale usability studies, and that they are needed in order to understand larger trends regarding system usability. Despite adoption of EHRs, many health professionals rate the usability of the systems as low. A range of usability issues have been noted when data is collected on a large scale through use of widely distributed questionnaires and websites designed to monitor user perceptions of usability. CONCLUSION As health information systems are deployed on a widespread basis, studies that examine systems used regionally or nationally are required. In addition, collection of large scale data on the usability of specific IT products is needed in order to complement smaller scale studies of specific systems.

Four principles for user interface design of computerised clinical decision support systems.

The paper presents results from a design research project of a user interface (UI) for a Computerised Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS). The ambition has been to design Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that can minimise medication errors. Through an iterative design process a digital prototype for prescription of medicine has been developed. This paper presents results from the formative evaluation of the prototype conducted in a simulation laboratory with ten participating physicians. Data from the simulation is analysed by use of theory on how users perceive information. The conclusion is a model, which sum up four principles of interaction for design of CDSS. The four principles for design of user interfaces for CDSS are summarised as four As: All in one, At a glance, At hand and Attention. The model emphasises integration of all four interaction principles in the design of user interfaces for CDSS, i.e. the model is an integrated model which we suggest as a guide for interaction design when working with preventing medication errors.