Design research in healthcare can be demanding. We report on eight challenges that designers and design researchers face when working on healthcare projects. We conducted four workshops with design researchers active in healthcare: six PhD candidates, a mixed group of thirteen design researchers, twelve design students, and eight design practitioners. Participants shared critical events from recent projects and reflected collaboratively to identify common challenges across different design approaches or disciplines. An analysis of the workshop materials resulted in eight themes of challenges, divided into three clusters. The first cluster, challenges in practice, includes (1) conducting fieldwork, (2) involving end users, and (3) dealing with sensitive situations. The second cluster, managerial challenges, includes (4) managing relations, (5) building understanding, and (6) communicating value. Finally, in the third cluster, generic challenges, includes (7) attuning to time and financial restrictions and (8) establishing rapport. This overview can contribute to design education and practice by helping both novice and experienced designers recognize and anticipate potential hurdles when engaging with the complexities of the healthcare environment.
Design is increasingly concerned with changing people's behaviours. A common characteristic to behavioural design approaches is their directionality: products provide clarity about or guidance towards the designer's intended behavioural outcome. In this paper we propose an alternative perspective that emphasizes ambiguity (i.e. affording multiple interpretations) and open-endedness (i.e. affording multiple courses of action). We build on two design cases in pediatric healthcare in which the aim was to stimulate young children's physical activity during hospitalization. Instead of commonly used exercise-based approaches, our focus was on physical activity in the form of spontaneous and unstructured play. We describe how interactions with ambiguous and open-ended playthings gave rise to intended behavioural outcomes. The findings are explained by drawing on Activity Theory, suggesting products can direct and leave things open on different levels of interaction. With our contribution we open up a new design space for behavioural design that reconciles designer's intentions with end user's appropriation.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. 1. Introduction Research through Design (RtD) refers to a way of doing research in which design activities play an essential role in the generation of knowledge. Introduced by Frayling (1993), RtD is commonly distinguished from research for design-i.e. research that aims to inform design practice-and research on (or about) design-i.e. research that aims to understand design practice (Forlizzi et al., 2009). Since its introduction, different design schools and disciplines increasingly have adopted RtD. Over the years, research communities have emerged that disseminate their RtD work in conferences, such as Design Research Society (DRS), Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), Designing Interactive Systems (DIS), and, very specifically, the Research Through Design conference (RTD). As a result, there are seemingly disparate ways of understanding and practicing RtD.
Disgust is a strong emotion of aversion. In the context of food, it is often referred to as a guardian of the mouth, preventing close contact with pathogens and the accidental consumption of poisons. However, disgust can also create a certain level of attraction and be part of positive experiences, even in the context of food. In this article, we discuss different ways of using disgust to influence eating behaviour and contribute to healthier food consumption. We outline ten different bridging concepts accompanied by various design exemplars on how to use disgust in the context of critical food design. In addition, we present four different lenses that can help to refine the design concepts.
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