Abstract
affiliation of medical identification jewellery with paramedics as the central user group. In doing so, we use Suchman’s notion of the affiliative object to reframe medical identification jewellery as a compound epistemic object with affiliations to paramedics in the province of Ontario, Canada. The paper begins by providing background including the methods used to assess the use of medical identification jewellery. There follows a section on how the findings from fieldwork were used to develop a first iteration of design recommendations. A compliancy table then appends discussion of key findings and design recommendations. Three design concepts were found to be particularly successful in focus groups of participant paramedics. These were modified and evaluated in response to the feedback obtained. One concept was ultimately rejected, while the other two underwent redesign. The two successful concepts were developed into high-fidelity prototypes. The design concepts presented here are observably original and not copies of previous designs. As affiliative objects, they aim to facilitate diagnostic work in emergency response. In doing so, they follow Lucy Suchman’s (2005: 381) injunction that “the constitution of objects is a strategic resource in the alignment of professional identities and organizational positionings.”
Keywords
medical identification jewellery; user-centered design; objectualization; object-centered socialities, epistemic objects; affiliative objects; boundary objects.
Citation
Haagaard, A., and Leeming, W. (2014) Designing Affiliative Objects: Investigating the Affiliations of Medical Identification Jewellery, in Lim, Y., Niedderer, K., Redström, J., Stolterman, E. and Valtonen, A. (eds.), Design's Big Debates - DRS International Conference 2014, 16-19 June, Umeå, Sweden. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2014/researchpapers/74
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Designing Affiliative Objects: Investigating the Affiliations of Medical Identification Jewellery
affiliation of medical identification jewellery with paramedics as the central user group. In doing so, we use Suchman’s notion of the affiliative object to reframe medical identification jewellery as a compound epistemic object with affiliations to paramedics in the province of Ontario, Canada. The paper begins by providing background including the methods used to assess the use of medical identification jewellery. There follows a section on how the findings from fieldwork were used to develop a first iteration of design recommendations. A compliancy table then appends discussion of key findings and design recommendations. Three design concepts were found to be particularly successful in focus groups of participant paramedics. These were modified and evaluated in response to the feedback obtained. One concept was ultimately rejected, while the other two underwent redesign. The two successful concepts were developed into high-fidelity prototypes. The design concepts presented here are observably original and not copies of previous designs. As affiliative objects, they aim to facilitate diagnostic work in emergency response. In doing so, they follow Lucy Suchman’s (2005: 381) injunction that “the constitution of objects is a strategic resource in the alignment of professional identities and organizational positionings.”