The 2.0 technology trends of new media, enhanced web applications, data-driven apps, and social media have advanced the sophistication and interaction of applications in most consumer domains. And co-occurring with this trend, the last three years have been filled with pronouncements of revolutionary changes in healthcare and personal health management envisioned by democratizing health information and enabling communications among people with very specific shared health concerns. Both technology innovations and consumer healthcare resources are included in the Health 2.0 arena. An exemplary Health 2.0 trend is that of health seeking communities. Several early and progressive health community sites have taken hold (Patients Like Me, CureTogether) with adoption from people in various health “communities of concern.” There are numerous specialized disease and patient community sites in every niche and using every wiki and social service. While these are not intended to replace patient communication with health professionals, they serve complementary purposes, …
Designing for Care
Reposted from the Rosenfeld book site / author blog. I am inviting experienced designers (and professionals and administrators) to review and advise the course of a new book, Design for Care. Interested and interesting people can register on the book’s community site at designforcare.com. Healthcare is a sector of complex interconnected systems. If we act only on the domains for which we have access and personal knowledge, we may interfere with or fail to account for other parts of the system. Therefore, the concept of this vertical book on healthcare design is to build bridges across the related systems, roles, and structures in healthcare. We hope to enable dialogue between designing for patient experiences, consumer health information, institutional experiences, and professional practice. I believe they are all interrelated, and the prepared designer will be more effective when they understand the problems, solutions, and methods in the realms of care experience …
Opportunity Overload
Information overload has been with us since the dawn of electronic media. According to McLuhan’s theories (and Robert Logan’s recent enhancements to media theory), when we humans overextend a communications channel, we create a new one. We create one commensurate with the increased volume and complexity of content that our culture generates. When we overwhelmed the capacity of radio and television (and print), the Internet emerged to expand our ability to communicate, globally. So each new media “channel” expands our scope and matches the developing complexity of communication. As we adapt and learn the new media channel, our cognitive capacity – trained as it was from prior media eras – experience cognitive infoload. As the online experience consumes more of our attention and with it our time, all of us notice the acceleration of overload. And with very little guidance from research, we are left with a range of practical …
Valuing tech vs. valuing learning
When will the computer finally recede into the ubiquitous background as promised by Don Norman a decade ago? Instead, educational reform is grasping at technology as the innovation, bringing technology front and center, as you have pointed out here. But how do we expect students even younger than yours Sam, such as inner city high school students, to switch to an online pedagogy and self-educate with discipline? It is the individual that chooses to self-educate – the tech are tools, not the stuff of learning itself. I’m not as sanguine about the role of interactive tech per se in the classroom, even though two heavy hitters in innovation (Clay Christensen) and organizational learning (John Seely Brown, blogged here)have recently weighed in with tech-oriented reform promises. Christensen says “For virtual learning to have this transformative impact, however, it must be implemented in the correct way. The theory of disruptive innovation shows …
