Abstract
The “Who Cares For The Carers” project examines the experiences of informal caregivers using a comparative approach between India and Finland. The research aims to understand what forms of support networks and communities, whether formal or informal, are emerging and evolving to provide support and nurture well being among the caregivers. What started with a simple research question “how do they cope?” turned into a realization of the existence of the “caregiving experience” involving the caregiver(s), care receiver and community. Through the analysis of our data, the complexity of caregiver coping emerged – a systemic (or wicked) problem whose actionable research and design opportunities needed to be conveyed to multiple stakeholders. We approach the idea of systemic design thinking as a series of diverse, integrated problems, which have multiple, integrated solutions. In this paper, we will focus on the systemic problem of caregiver coping through the lens of space – a thought provoking systemic problem within a larger systemic problem. This paper explores not just the direction of future research and innovation for caregiving – but how the role and approach of designers is changing and how that might effect on the way we conduct design research and transfer knowledge.
Keywords
complexity, data visualization, design ethnography, design practice, experience design, health innovation, product design, service design, space, systemic design research, wicked problems
Citation
Kulonen, A., Pham, H., and Prendergast, D. (2012) Wicked Space: Visualizing caregiving in Finland and India - systemic design thinking in design research, in Israsena, P., Tangsantikul, J. and Durling, D. (eds.), Research: Uncertainty Contradiction Value - DRS International Conference 2012, 1-4 July, Bangkok, Thailand. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2012/researchpapers/67
Wicked Space: Visualizing caregiving in Finland and India - systemic design thinking in design research
The “Who Cares For The Carers” project examines the experiences of informal caregivers using a comparative approach between India and Finland. The research aims to understand what forms of support networks and communities, whether formal or informal, are emerging and evolving to provide support and nurture well being among the caregivers. What started with a simple research question “how do they cope?” turned into a realization of the existence of the “caregiving experience” involving the caregiver(s), care receiver and community. Through the analysis of our data, the complexity of caregiver coping emerged – a systemic (or wicked) problem whose actionable research and design opportunities needed to be conveyed to multiple stakeholders. We approach the idea of systemic design thinking as a series of diverse, integrated problems, which have multiple, integrated solutions. In this paper, we will focus on the systemic problem of caregiver coping through the lens of space – a thought provoking systemic problem within a larger systemic problem. This paper explores not just the direction of future research and innovation for caregiving – but how the role and approach of designers is changing and how that might effect on the way we conduct design research and transfer knowledge.