Posts filed under ‘salud/ health’
Personal data tracking-self-management or paranoia?
With the democratization of the technologies in the web, data has become an important issue not only for researchers but also for ordinary people. The article: “A Data Driven Life”, published by the NY Times on April 2010, shows how individuals go tracking their own lives in order to make better and informed decisions [even though some times it makes them more paranoid than anything else]. The article talks about several examples taking place mostly in the US. One of these cases is www.medhelp.org, which is a popular forum where individuals log in data in order to get answers to some of their health problems. There is estimation that individuals launch more than 30,000 tracking projects every month [Gary Wolf, 2010].
Or what about “Daytum”, created by Nick Feltron, a kind of “Google Analytics” [stats for website/blog tracking] for your OWN PERSONAL DATA. Is a platform that allows you to collect, categorize and communicate your data in very visuals way. (more…)
Giving the space for people to talk, don´t confuse participation and collaboration
Frame 1: projects I carried out at Procorp, Santiago, Chile 2008. We involved the communities in defining solutions for a municipality project.
‘Ninety five percent of the world’s designers focus all of their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest ten percent of the world’s customers’ (Polak 2007:19). This reality is followed by what is exhibited in design journals for the design community, or publications made for the general public. We should reflect in the impact design could make in people’s lives, yet, it should move towards a socially responsible field. How can we integrate communities to the process? Amy Smith at MIT D-Lab has said “I believe very strongly that solutions to problems in the developing world are best created in collaboration with the people who will be using them”. Though, as I mentioned before, I don’t like using the “developing world” terminology. Collaborative research [see Lassiter for collaborative ethnography] can be used in applied work for achieving several objectives. For example, it can make a difference to address a Community Development project. As the authors in Community Building in the 21st Century argue it is important to involve the local communities in the research processes for achieving sustainability, long-term impact and self-effective communities. When the community is involved and invests effort and resources, the individuals participating become part of the change. Thereof they are more likely to embrace it and contribute to future development and challenges. Throughout my experience, I’ve come to firmly believe this. I have seen this in Community Development problems related to: poverty, public health and estate housing. These pictures are from some projects that included individuals in the design process. In different degrees of collaboration. In the private sector, we can also say that collaborative research is useful to take charge of all the different views and requirements of the people “touched” by the project. In the case of organizational change assessment, it is important to understand the “uncovered” relations, goals and expectations of the people involved. There are things that can be elicited just under a collaborative point of view. If people feel represented in any way by the interventions, if they feel that they were “heard” it is more likely that they welcome change. You need to give the space for people to talk.
Frames 2 & 3 show a research for pre-investment report done for the integrated protection system for early childhood in Chile: “Chile Crece Contigo” , which has been indicated by the United Nations Economic and Social Council as a development strategy that works [Go to source]. Our group, in charge of understanding and proposing the parts of the public policy that defined the products that could be recommended in a maternity, integrated the different communities that would be “touched” in our process. [Go to Report] Participation of midwives Hospital Clínico U.Chile & Consultorio Talagante.
DON’T CONFUSE COLLABORATION WITH MULTIVOCALITY OR INSTRUMENTAL PARTICIPATION
So what is collaboration? Or may I say, what is REAL collaboration? Today collaboration and collaborative methods may be considered buzzwords. How (more…)
