KT-EQUAL future events - Ageing Research and Design 4 Health Conf.

Dear colleague,

KT-EQUAL is planning lots of interesting events in the next few months focused on aspects of ageing research.

Below are a few upcoming events that may be of interest to you, more information can always be found on our website.

Upcoming workshops include topics such as -

• digital inclusion
• ethical dilemmas
• and creative societies.

A flyer is available with more information about these exciting free events.

The I'dgo consortium has also confirmed the full programme for their seminar on An international perspective on the Built Environment for an Ageing Population: Issues in maintaining access to outdoor places on the 16th February 2011.

Another upcoming conference which is still accepting papers* is the Design for Health Conference in Sheffield Hallam University on the 13th-15th July 2011
http://www.design4health.org.uk/

We look forward to seeing you at some of our events in the future.

Best Wishes

Helen Haigh
KT-EQUAL Co-ordinator
University of Sheffield

PJ adds: *Kirsty Christer at SHU contacted me re. D4H to advise that submissions are open until 7th Feb.

Call for Papers for the European Design 4 Health Conference 2011 + 6th CIPED

Lab4Living at Sheffield Hallam University is pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the  
European Design 4 Health Conference 2011. The conference will be held at Sheffield Hallam University from 13 - 15 July 2011, Sheffield, UK.

The conference will provide a platform for dialogue between designers, healthcare professionals, funding bodies, researchers and users. Submissions to the conference are invited, in the following forms:
Abstract submissions: extended abstracts that address the conference themes.
Exhibition proposals: exhibits of innovative artefacts or systems that make significant progress in design for health.
Visit www.design4health.org.uk . Join the conference mailing list for regular updates.

6º CIPED - Congresso Int. de Pesquisa em Design (6th CIPED - Int. Congress of Research in Design)

- to be held at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, October 10-12, 2011:
An Agenda for Design. More details will be provided later, just keep the dates free!

Professor Peter Lansley, BSc, MSc, PhD, MCIOB, FCOT
Director, KT-EQUAL – Knowledge Transfer for Extending Quality Life
School of Construction Management and Engineering, URS Building,
University of Reading, Whiteknights, PO Box 219, Reading, RG6 6AW, UK

p.r.lansley at reading.ac.uk www.sparc.ac.uk (and my source).

The Beauty of Diagrams: Vitruvian Man BBC Four

Tomorrow a new six part series begins on BBC Four.

Diagrams, conceptual frameworks and cognitive spaces have driven my interest in models of care and h2cm for decades:

1996

Peter attends 'Thinking with Diagrams' Colloquium, IEE, Savoy Place, London.

18 Jan BCS-SGES et al. Professional Group C4: Digest No: 96/010

Chronology

I also maintain a diagrams listing on the sciences domain listing, suggestions welcome.

So, really looking forward to this!

New: The Journal of Humanities and Information Systems

Dear colleagues

It is my pleasure to announce a new journal, published by IBIMA, that will cater for articles in the interdisciplinary field of Information Systems and the Humanities (JHIS). This is a call for submissions for the first edtion of JHIS.

JOURNAL DESCRIPTION

The Journal of Humanities and Information Systems (JHIS) is an international peer reviewed and applied research journal that publishes papers on the symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines of Information Systems and the Humanities. Its unique focus will be research on Humanities-enriched IS, but other Humanities-Computing papers and case studies will also be considered. All papers will be subjected to a multiple blind peer review process. Papers should contribute to the existing body of knowledge of the domain in terms of theory and/or practice.

MISSION

JHIS aims to create an international forum to discuss and evaluate studies that implement theoretical constructs borrowed from the Humanities in various aspects of Information Systems, as well as investigations regarding the application of information technology in the Humanities. The creation of
publication opportunities for research with refreshing angles, some borrowed from other sciences, is a conscious effort to share interest and useful research and to counteract rigid procedures that are "stifling the intellectual advancement of our discipline" (Shoib and Nandhakumar, 2009).

SCOPE

Topics of interest for this journal include, but are not limited to, the following list:

• Linguistics and Information Systems
• History and Information Systems
• Art and Information Systems
• Philosophy and Information Systems
• Law and Information Systems
• Hermeneutics and Information Systems

CALL FOR ARTICLE SUBMISSIONS TO JHIS

Since there still are limited publication opportunities for Information System scientists (cf. Straub, 2009:v) in comparison with some other older, well-established disciplines, new opportunities should be embraced and used in order to build our discipline. Therefore, our colleagues are invited to submit some of their research outputs to this new outlet.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS AND PEER REVIEWERS

Please let me know if you would be interested to become an associate editor or peer reviewer of JHIS.
The editors and reviewers of JHIS should be like diamond miners taking a positive view while looking for "exciting forays into new research domains" (Straub, 2009:vii). The general aim in the review processes of this new journal will be to be inclusive and developmental rather than to perform "a
modern hygiene ritual", because we agree with Wastell and MacMaster (2008:64) that "a high rejection rate implies a collective failure of scholarship not the intellectual prosperity of a field".

For more information about the journal and submissions, see:
http://www.ibimapublishing.com/journals/JHIS/jhis.html

Jan H. Kroeze, School of Computing, University of South Africa
(editor-in-chief)

My source:
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 24, No. 451
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
www.digitalhumanities.org/humanist

HCI 2011 Health, Wealth and Happiness Call for Papers

The 25th British Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI2011)

July 4th - 8th, 2011 at Northumbria University, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK.

The HCI Educators conference, Workshops and Tutorials will be held on 4th and 5th July, 2011 and a Doctorial Consortium on the 5th July. The main conference runs from the 6th-8th July, 2011. HCI 2011 is organised by the PaCT Lab (Northumbria University) in cooperation with the British Computer Society.

This year we will be looking for papers to put in our alt.hci sessions. So if you think your work doesn't usually make it into this conference then maybe this year is your year.

Accepted papers will be published by BCS in the annual conference proceedings, freely available online in BCS Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC) and will also be included in the ACM digital library.

Important Dates:

• Full Paper and Workshop submission: 21st January, 2011
• Workshop notification of acceptance: 11th February, 2011
• Work in Progress and alt.chi submission: 18th February, 2011
• Short and Posters  submission: 18th February, 2011
• Demos and Experiences submission: 18th February, 2011
• Doctoral Consortium 18th February, 2011
• Panels: 18th February, 2011
• Notification of Acceptance for all other categories: 8th April 2011
• Camera-ready copy for proceedings required by 6th May 2011

Deadline for author registration: 4th May 2011

Conference: 4th July - 8th July, 2011

Conference Scope and Description:

Human Computer Interaction is a key area of computing. This is the leading conference in the field of Human Computer Interaction in the UK. It covers the design, evaluation and application of techniques and approaches for interacting with devices and services.  HCI is now on its 25th conference and at this anniversary we ask you to reflect on our theme of Health, Wealth and Happiness. Technology is posed to play a growing part in our health and maintaining well being into older age; wealth manifests itself in many ways, many of which we do not always recognise - relationships, richness of life experience, creativity and innovation, knowledge and qualities of character. Lastly is there a relationship between happiness and technology use, will more gadgets increase our well being? And as ever contributions in any aspect of HCI are welcome.

Suggested topics:

We solicit original research and technical papers not published elsewhere including the following topics:

• Affective interaction
• Aesthetic interaction
• Art and interaction
• Bodily interaction
• Cyber-relationships, sex and eroticism
• Design and Evaluation methods
• Ethnographic and field studies
• Ethics and HCI
• Experience Design
• Fun and Play
• Health informatics and technology
• Human values
• Information visualization and presentation
• Interaction Criticism
• Moods, meditation and relaxation
• Musical and audio interaction
• Novel interaction techniques and devices
• Privacy, Security and Trust
• Social networking
• Spirituality and Beliefs
• Sustainability and HCI
• Ubiquitous, pervasive, and mobile interaction
• Universal design
• Usability studies
• User Experience
• Wearables and fashion
• Wellbeing and technology

Keynote Speakers

• Abigail Sellon, Microsoft Research, UK
• Gregory Abowd, Georgia Tech, USA

Paper Submission:

Submissions must be in an electronic form as PDF format. All submissions should be formatted to the ACM standard, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates , and will appear on-line in the BCS EWiCS series and the ACM Digital Library.

Submissions should be made through the EasyChair system, which will open for submissions in November and will be linked from the conference website http://www.hci2011.co.uk/ with detailed instructions. We have put together an international review panel. Submissions will be peer-reviewed by at least 3 peer-reviewers, selected by the appropriate chairs. Additional guidelines can be found on the conference's website.

It is a condition of acceptance that at least one author must register for each accepted paper, no later than the early bird deadline of 4th May 2011.

Drupal musings 15: modules and Drupalcon videos

Since picking up the health career model and publishing the model online in 1986 the term holistic bandwidth has emerged. The blog in 2006 and to date has seen other loosely defined terms:

care architecture
4-fold care
cogneography
holistic competency

Using Drupal 6 I've got to a position were I am getting to know core plus some contributed modules. One of the latter is webforms. It's bound to be help seeing what webforms can do in terms of one-way data submission, compared to using CCK - the content construction kit. In webforms the grid component holds great promise, but in creating a grid for music genres I notice there is no validation (which would be quite a trick!). Users should only be able to select one type of music they want to hear most of the time. The validation question is going to help force the issue of getting under the hood. All that reading revealed in previous posts is also needed to sort the theme too.

I remember first coming across the word instantiate. As I write, think about a h2cm glossary and experiment for real with Drupal 6 - I wonder whether the content types I create (in Drupal 7 especially) may help define some of the above and other terms?

The majority of the sessions from Drupalcon CPH are available on video.
There are some I still need to catch being in other sessions.

Drupal(con) musings 14: design, UI, UX, thinking and care

In his funny and very engaging session 'Designing UI with Seven' at Drupalcon CPH Mark Boulton discussed four user experience (UX) principles and introduced us to ten user interface (UI) guidelines.

Mark highlighted the need for a mental model and the challenge within publishing of there being someone who has the big picture. Who knows exactly what is going on? The health career model provides a model and can provide a canvas to support the big picture.

What really caught my attention though was as soon as Mark asserted -
"Don't make people think." -

I immediately thought -
'Make people care instead'.

Well, I'm not sure if an interface can do what public (mental) health policy, government public funded education programmes and the concerted efforts of the health professions has largely failed to achieve. The users of e-health information systems do need the design of the system to be transparent to them. IT mustn't get in the way. Mark's point of course is the the user's should be free to focus on the problem the system is to help solve. In health this includes:

• recording of a health (and social) care record;
• secure information / file management and access;
• information governance, reporting and archiving;
  
• timely, ready access for those who need to know;
• ability to manipulate the record to obtain knowledge: from data > from information;
• to provide patient (carer as advocate) access and verification;
• remote access with rugged devices.
  
• ...
  

This does not mean that people are oblivious to design: far from it (iThis - iThat!). My point is that as we follow Mark and other design expert's advice then users should be able to focus on care design and the care outputs arising.

So in health we need interfaces and user experiences that DO encourage reflection, thought: thinking.

P.S. In another session (or magazine!?) on creating mobile versions of sites the advice included getting rid of the crap - the clutter, the >1000px width adornments. Rhetoric aside - my design thought would be not to include anything that could be described in this way whatever the media type (maybe I should lighten up!) ;-)

To follow: update on my Drupal efforts.

Ru! Ru! Ru! Ru! ..... alarmed by the noise? [ambient care]

Working in nursing home liaison I am a regular visitor to various homes in my patch.

As I respond to referrals inevitably I spend several minutes waiting to see residents, relatives and staff. At this point I can take in the ambience of the home and all too frequently what stands out is the home's call system.

Many are acutely effective.

Even though I am not there for long - 30-60 minutes, the volume, tone and the overall quality of some of these systems can be grossly irritating. Due to the care needs of the resident population the alarm calls are also a constant. This is not just my audiological experience, but one shared with students on placement with me.

Attracting the attention of staff is crucial. Caring staff do want to know who, where and when someone needs assistance. Ironically, sometimes that annoying, intrusive alarm call is supported with a plaintive shout for "someone!". As ever there are many ways to define person centred care. In response to the alarm's screech, scream and shrill the staff head to the panel and seek direction to Room 3 or 7.

If care is personalised then whatever happened to our signature tunes? Did this individual play a musical instrument? Gleaned from their life history record this might at least include Jo's musical favourites? It's true that existing alarms are anonymous, and so confidentiality is preserved. Meanwhile though peace, well-being and staff retention rates(?) are lined up against the walls and reverberated, rev erbe rat ed, re ve r be ra te d ... ...

Of course, at some remote future time I might embarrass myself as I press the red button and the Thunderbirds March rings out down the corridor, around a left, a right corner to light a panel.

Fellow residents and visitors might be given to say "Gee, there goes Alan Tracy needing help again!" Maybe by then the robots will have it sorted: the latest in-situ care units will save the day and people's ears.

Seriously though: designers, owners and managers of homes must consider the acoustic architecture of the care environment; or are they also anticipating a rise in the average age of employees with a consequent impact on the hearing acuity of employees? As to the quality of life of the residents go figure: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1!

Care design: c/o DDC Copenhagen

On Monday afternoon I explored the city of Copenhagen walking to several sites - the Tivoli Gardens, the Tycho Brahe Planetarium and other parts of this lovely city. I ended up spending a couple of hours at the Danish Design Center.

Like my occasional visits to London's museums, the DDC although very small provided a couple of pearls. One display across a wall upstairs outlined the main forms of design theory and practice:

• The USER as designer
• TECHNOLOGY in the design process
• New MATERIALS and smart design
• NATURE
• SOCIAL design and CARE design
• GREEN design
• ART design
• EMOTIONAL design
• REPLACEMENT due to changing fashions (built in obsolescence!)
• SERVICE and CONCEPT design

The following text was displayed to describe SOCIAL design and CARE design:

The population pyramid has changed shape. The working-age group is shrinking compared to the group of people of retirement age. In addition, there is the large segment of the so-called weak - particularly in the 3rd world. Thus, social design and care design will be big and important design areas in the future, because the solutions will seek to strengthen the health care sector and improve conditions in the 3rd world and for underpriviledged people in general. Parameters such as increased dependency, quality of life and dignity are crucial elements in solutions relating to social design and care design. DDC display; August 23 2010.

Many themes come together here. Some are represented in the tags below. Care design is much more than what we might consider as 'standard design' aspects, such as; user interface [UI] and user experience [UX]. Care design is even more dependent upon user engagement.

There is another dependency that as yet has a '?' in the data entry box.

Care design needs coherent forms of personal, social and civic responsibility. These are yet to emerge as think tanks, governments and health experts seek (urgent) solutions.

In comparison to the above the 200 character limit on labels (tags) on Blogger presents a very small challenge. I can well imagine the outline of a book on 'care design': the result would be a big tome; but this would not just be (PJ inspired) hyperbole. Care design is not new, but the DDC text above must accentuate the individual, and not just care design at the public and private sector hospital level. Care design in an individual context is mission critical. Heady content - for books, websites and policies - as befits our times.

Thank you DDC, Copenhagen: wonderful indeed.

Drupal musings 11: Git up and go ...

For more than I care to remember I've recognised that version control is an essential facet of software development. During this time though I've not had a need for version control. Renewed awareness of this tool was inevitable as I decided to identify a content management system [CMS], which brought me to Drupal and I simultaneously also discovered Ruby.

Now I'm pleased that over the past three years I did not commit to Concurrent Versions System [CVS] as used by the Drupal community. I listened to talks, downloaded, and tinkered, but now - the (old) news that Drupal 8 development will use GIT.

So, for me it is time to jump on-board with git for version control: a book and presentations next week:

http://cph2010.drupal.org/sessions/git-fundamentals

It's not that I'll be contributing to D8, it just makes sense to git up to speed on this (sorry!). I've been through the program and created my schedule for next week in Copenhagen. There is so much to look forward to!

Version control is one thing, having the need and discipline for testing is another ...

History, pocket facts and diffusion

I can't remember exactly which shop it was - Blackwell's at Liverpool University I think - but quite a while ago I picked up a secondhand copy of Roger's Diffusion of Innovations.

I've maintained a link^* to The Diffusion of Innovations Model and Outreach from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine to Native American Communities for many years. So I instantly recognised Roger's book as an important text. I've been reminded to pick this book up soon by a rather musty 'message' postmarked 1828.

In June I was invited to a workshop - 'Funding learning for better health and social care information' which was held at UCLAN (University of Central Lancashire). On a table with various informatics brochures, newsletters and DVDs was one of those small 'pocket facts'; a little multi-folded mini-epic. Of the 22 sides compressed into 6 x 5 cm was one devoted to the history of the university.

There at the top: the start. UCLAN began its life as the:

Institution for the Diffusion of Knowledge
in 1828.

Knowledge, Innovations, Ideas, Concepts
diffusion
- nothing new under the sun.

^* Listed under 'Health & Social Care, Nursing & Related Theory & Practice'.

Drupal musings 10: Archive & FAQ

There are now three archive pages more or less complete. I'm using HTML 5 and CCS3 (well trying) to mark and style the pages, with the addition of the new semantic tags:

article, aside, figure, footer, header, hgroup, menu, nav, section {display:block;}

(I'm not sure if these disappeared at one point in the editor, so everything is a work in progress.)

Next up - the FAQs. As a live document this will be styled differently. As yet I am not quite sure how, but I still need to sort the way to handle quotes. The method I found includes blockquote: hover: after in the style sheet, then combines blockquote, cite and p on the page. The problem is you can't copy and paste, something that visitors may wish to do. A related issue is how to display when the page was updated and accessed - an essential piece of page furniture. A search reveals many other examples and now is the time to experiment.

I also have to remember that I still don't know what the final theme and look for the site will be. So global settings, columns and such like need to be kept in-check for the moment. There may be Drupal modules to add page access / updated details, so time to check on this and accessibility. And all with just ten days more to work - then Drupalcon! :-)

The questions and answers are being be completely revised; so if you have any you would like to see please get in touch: h2cmng at yahoo.co.uk

From: Harvard Business Review - The Four Phases of Design Thinking

I came across the following post on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network - The Conversation:

10:54 AM Thursday July 29, 2010
by Warren Berger

What can people in business learn from studying the ways successful designers solve problems and innovate? On the most basic level, they can learn to question, care, connect, and commit — four of the most important things successful designers do to achieve significant breakthroughs.

Having studied more than a hundred top designers in various fields over the past couple of years (while doing research for a book), I found that there were a few shared behaviors that seemed to be almost second nature to many designers. And these ingrained habits were intrinsically linked to the designer's ability to bring original ideas into the world as successful innovations. All of which suggests that they merit a closer look.

You can read the whole of Warren's original post, while below I have taken his focus concepts CONNECT, CARE, COMMIT and QUESTION and associated them to the care (knowledge) domains of Hodges' model. Following that there is a rationale. ...

connect	question
care	commit

Connect:Intrapersonal
Placed in the intra-interpersonal domain this is the domain of concepts, thoughts, ideas, creativity and innovation. This is the essence of Warren's reference to 'connect' -

Designers, I discovered, have a knack for synthesizing--for taking existing elements or ideas and mashing them together in fresh new ways.

The INTERPERSONAL links page also highlights other conceptual 'inhabitants' here; in particular knowledge management, the semantic web and psychology. If analysis and reduction is the outcome of the hard sciences, then here as Warren writes is synthesis, integration and invention. We can see how self-belief is critical to many innovators who pursue their dreams regardless of rebuffs by the establishment, to whom - within the health career model - they are also diametrically opposed.

Question:Sciences
The ability to question lie at the heart of human activity, and although thought and mind are represented in the interpersonal domain, questions also exemplify the output of human reasoning powers in the SCIENCES. Evidence based care depends on an ongoing process-ion of questions that drive research. Problem solving with its iterative sequence of assess (question), plan, action, evaluation (question). The health career model reminds us though of the need to consider not only quantity, logic and objective measures, but the role of qualitative research and methods.

Care:Sociology
Seeing Warren's inclusion of 'care' drew me to his post. Here he concludes:

Focus groups and questionnaires don't cut it; designers know that you must care enough to actually be present in people's lives.

Health and (social!) care are social activities. Our students are socialised into the professions and disciplines as they pursue their careers. Our work depends on the effectiveness of human communication and relationships. You can read about 'counselling' and only get so far; ultimately health care is experiential. It is something to be practised.

Commit:POLITICAL
Warren deals with the way designer's view risk and committing early to an idea and the project that might follow. For me 'commit' and being committed has explicit political - power - connotations. So, Warren's reference to commit in the sense of producing a model or prototype and working through problems can be extended. Invention and design may be cognitive pursuits, but they are non-trivial in that they must ultimately and literally be negotiated. Being able to 'commit' needs to be sanctioned. Individuals need to be empowered, or recognise when to either proceed or seek advice and guidance. Furthermore, Warren notes:

The designer's ability to "fail forward" is a particularly valuable quality in times of dynamic change. Today, many companies find themselves operating in a test-and-learn business environment that requires rapid prototyping. (?)

Perhaps the recognition in health policy of the need to balance negative and positive risk taking, self-care and personalised budgets can also be discerned in the above?

Acknowledgement:
Thanks to Warren Berger and HBR

Drupal musings 9: Copenhagen next month & the archive

With less than a month to go now until Drupalcon 2010 in Europe - Copenhagen; it's time to look at the program:

http://cph2010.drupal.org/news/initial-program

- and the tracks available. Already, the session choice is dizzying. In the mix is -

• Designing UI with Seven, Mark Boulton
• Semantic Taxonomies, Johannes Wehner
• Add a mobile version to your Drupal site, Martin Jørge
• Imaginary users can save your Drupal site, J-P Stace
• Writing Better CSS for Drupal, Maarten Verbaarscho

It will be worthwhile considering previous events and sessions attended and building on the content there. I must also check on the education app related sessions, birds of a feather.

I showed someone the styled archive pages - apparently they look old - good to hear! ;-)

Drupal musings 8: Styling the archive

I've been editing the basic html pages (as mentioned before on W2tQ) these include:

• Brian Hodges' introduction with a content listing and the scope of the model to help bridge theory and practice.
• My introduction to the model based on an interview with Brian conducted 28th May 1998 in Manchester, England.

I've been here before and lost the thread, working within Drupal. This time though editing the pages in Textmate, things are taking shape. Three headings, three fonts (currently) Georgia, Droid Serif, Tangerine; styled lists and striped tables. It might be basic, but there is a style sheet that is almost breathing as it INFLATES : deflates, the result of various experiments. The fonts look good except for the FOUT 'flash of unstyled text'. As the previous link shows there are some fixes for that - which I hope will follow in due course. That would be a distraction at this point though as there is much to focus upon. Although the archive will have a style of its own, other parts of the site must reflect its content. That said, there still needs to be some stylistic coherence. ...

Written in Padstow, Quayside Cottage listening to a children's show on the bandstand.

Drupal musings 7: HTML5, CSS3 ... & Mr Hodges meets Drupal

At Manchester airport in May I noticed Web Design Essentials (WDE). Reasons of cost £14.99 and weight meant it was put back on the news stand. The content was excellent! Back in the UK a week later, no sign of it in the supermarket. I found a copy this week at WH Smiths and made the 'investment' - a belated holiday treat.

This is gold mine of nuggets on HTML5, design - wireframes, user experience (UX), fonts and typography:

http://www.font-face.com/
http://fontdeck.com/

- personas, CSS3, jQuery and much more. Now I think about it UX has been around for quite a while, it's a sure sign of how web design has matured such that practitioners can and must focus on the experience. There's another blog post there contrasting UX in web design with UX in health services. Reading about the use of personas in design and planning for a site might also deserve a specific post. As WDE indicates there are companies dedicated to UX. I do not have that luxury and yet I do have to define my initial target audience and their anticipated experience.

The web design related listing I maintain at LINKS I (Intrapersonal) are being updated as a result of the leads in WDE.

Through the scheduling and poll services of Doodle (thanks Chris) and with the Drupal NW England list I'm checking on which day in the autumn - November - is best for a group of volunteers to help jump start the new site. Everything is sorted now for Drupalcon next month.

Curriculum design and the value of whitespace

The best websites are often variously described as clean, slick, easy to navigate and access. They are considered 'best' often as a consequence of appreciating the need for whitespace. This means of course that they are also minimalist, uncluttered, easier to style consistently and they often have plenty of free space. The Google site and resulting interface is a prime example, to the extent it has become a recognised brand characteristic.

The pressures on curricula almost preempts the phenomena of student cramming. Without careful planning and discipline curricula can be jammed so full that there is no slack, no whitespace.

As a result there is also no space to reflect (Clouder, 2009).

Reference:
Lynn Clouder (2009) Promotion of Reflective Learning, Teaching and Assessment through Curriculum Design, Occasional Paper 10, Connecting Reflective Learning, Teaching and Assessment, Edited by Helen Bulpitt and Mary Deane, Higher Education Academy. p.11.

Additional links:
Whitespace programming language

Drawing - the stage of conceptual design

The health career model
- drawing -
for health and social care professionals, et al.. ...

"The Italian word for drawing, disegno,
also encapsulates the stage of conceptual design.
The ability to imagine a design
and then develop it on paper was an increasingly valuable skill."

The Purpose of Drawing: The British Museum, May 2010.

Additional link:
Disegno: Italian Fine Art Drawing

My source: 16 May 2010, Visit to The British Museum, Italian Renaissance drawings.

Design an interactive space - 2 meters square - for Expolab project

My source: DESRIST discussion LinkedIn

Hello DESRIST members.

This is about an interactive design project, and the folks at Citilab are very interested in design research. Check it out if you're interested.

Letting you know that Citilab Cornella has an open call for exhibits that explore digital technology for their new project "Expolab". This experiment challenges designers to design 1 or more Expolab cubes with interactives that explore how new digital media and tech affects how we share memories, connect, travel through time and space, work, and experience safety. An opportunity to experiment, and work with the brilliant Expolab team Irene Lapuente, Ramon Sangüesa, and Astrid Lubsen of Citilab.

Start with the cubed 2mx2m space, then modify the space/walls as needed to make it experimental and interactive. Spaces will be equipped with electric and internet connections if needed. Citilab will build 6 of these and put them on display in Barcelona. Expolab cubes can have any number of walls, you can design the whole thing as long as it fits in 2mx2m. The Tech Virtual hosts free 3D prototyping space in Second Life for you to build or document your entry ( http://slurl.com/secondlife/The%20Tech%202/160/211/33 ). If you'd prefer to use your own tools that's fine too, just upload your screenshots after creating a project at:

http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/expolab

Full design brief at http://thetechvirtual.org/projects/expolab/expolab-brief-3.pdf

Looking forward to some new input on this experimental venture! Expolab team comes online for live design reviews Thursdays at 13:00 EST / 10:00 PST / and 18:00 CET (Barcelona). Did I miss anything? Send a note to rketner[at]thetech.org

About Expolab: http://expolab.net/eng/?page_id=5
"Expolab is a new way to understand exhibitions. It is a laboratory devoted to researching and creating new exhibitions in the area of technology, innovation, science and design, which are the main focus of work at Citilab. Expolab raises the possibility of creating exhibitions with strong citizen participation and contribution from the very beginning of an exhibition, and not just using the audience as providers of feedback once the exhibitions is one. This represents a new challenge within the world of museums and exhibitions.

Additional links:

5th DESRIST Conference Design Science Research http://desrist2010.iwi.unisg.ch/

Sciences knowledge domain: Virtual Reality, Visualization resources
(suggestions, reports of broken links appreciated):
http://www.p-jones.demon.co.uk/linksTwo.htm

Sun Microsystems blog: Pretty good example* of a Strategic (Design) Brief

The Sun Microsystems site includes a blog (Martin Hardee) with an article entitled as above that poses eight questions. These questions can greatly inform the process of creating a strategic brief (which is also provided for download). Although the item is from 2005 and the context differs - contrast a corporate website design and a future website for Hodges' model - there is value for me in answering the questions. So here goes... starting with the opening paragraph from the original blog post then the questions in bold, interspersed with my responses:

As I've mentioned in previous postings, the most important single step you can take in designing anything for the web is to create a strategic brief. This should be done early in the discovery phase of any design project. The reason it's so important is that it will make you focus and it will provide a guide map for whoever is creating and implementing your design. To write a strategic brief, you'll need to know a lot of important but oft-ignored basics such as:

A) Why are you embarking on this design (or new web site, or whatever), anyway?

The existing website was created in 1997 using Hot Metal Pro and written in HTML. The site was built as a personal and spare time project around the original course notes of Brian Hodges. These were in the form of Word files produced with secretarial support as part of a Post Graduate Certificate of Eduction project. As a result the current website has developed in a rather ad-hoc manner, with the addition of pages on informatics and information. The home page was re-designed in 2005 using Fireworks reflecting the model for which it is 'home'. At no point thus far has the website provided a community for users of Hodges' model. The site is currently static, without a database to support dynamic content development and a community of users.

Use of Drupal will provide a (truly) dynamic lever by potentiating the following:

1. sheer unadulterated enthusiasm and fun (lifelong learning - literacy skills);
   
2. a more professional footing (hosting...);
3. international customisation (multiple languages);
4. ultimately address several audiences (health, education, informatics and public);
5. find out what would-be users of the model want;
   
6. create some consistent styling;
7. provide an archive;
   
8. building on the foundation provided by the website and this blog W2tQ;
9. provide a foundation for future research (by producing my 1st Drupal site - a beta);
10. (As already noted I have wondered about linking this project to a research course, but at the moment I ask myself what's the point...?)
    

B) What are your business objectives and how would you measure success?

There are no 'business objectives' as such, but if this blog and a future site can generate some revenue to support purchase of hardware, (some) software and services then "that's about time". General objectives are to generate critical thinking and decisions on:

• content types to support the use of Hodges' model;
• phased development;
• interface design - use of Ajax, jQuery.

Ultimate (reach for the stars...) objectives:

• to invite users to contribute to the model's development;
• reopen the question of visualization in the social sciences;
  
• to learn of other conceptual frameworks that might also support 'global health for all';
  
• to produce a virtual learning environment that conjoins health, informatics and education;
• to influence nursing curricula development;
• to create a self-sustaining global community of users
• to cover some costs and let go. ....
  

C) Who are your various audiences or customer segments and what are their objectives (often different from your business objectives, btw)

+ students (health and social care); students (generic - PSHE);
+ all qualified care professionals
+ lecturers

The objectives here are diverse, but include completion of learning and course tasks, including essays and case studies, tools to support and demonstrate reflection and holistic / integrated care in theory and practice. Lesson plans and means of assessment are also essential, to what extent can students and professionals - indeed all users of a conceptual framework demonstrate - competency? This has to be through specific assignments and marked assessment which could include:

1. essay;
2. case study;
3. oral presentations, audio, video podcasts;
4. quizzes, e.g., multiple choice;
5. and possibly specific 'roles' through the Drupal site.
   

The politics of the educational establishment include that tools should be evidenced, safe, fit for purpose. There may also be a requirement to dovetail with use of dedicated learning management systems and standards such as SCORM. As such a new site should seek to incorporate such standards - through Drupal - in so far as they do not affect innovation and projecting the model into the future.

+ patients and carers

Patients and carers would often benefit from a means to facilitate dialogue with their keyworkers and the associated health and social care team. Hodges' model can help provide a schema, portal and media form for such dialogues. This dialogue can potentially act as:

• an aide-mémoire for the patient during a Consultant appointment (maximising the time available for both parties);
  
• a means for educational engagement (medication concordance, relapse prevention....).
  

+ policy makers and care commissioners
+ managers

These stakeholders are concerned with metrics, outcomes, quality and evidence.

+ information and communication technology staff

In addition to project management tools ICT staff would benefit from tools that support socio-technical perspectives.

For all the would-be users of Hodges' model the critical question is evidence. The new site should provide a foundation for research in Hodges' model and other conceptual frameworks.


D) What's the scope: How much are you going to tackle at once?

By using a content management system Drupal provides a means to be more productive (once sufficiently skilled!) in terms of addressing the objectives and scope delineated above.

This is the key question!

I need to acknowledge advice already provided from friends at the Drupal NW England group and Ruby community. Basically - do what you need to to get a site out of the door. What I must identify is the baseline functionality and design that will provide the foundation for a site. The baseline must include:

• roles and access rules;
• at least one specific content type (whether existing or new) for Hodges' model;
• RDF;
• accessibility.

E) What sort of constraints do you have in terms of product, business process, technology, or budget?

Hodges' model is nebulous and grand in its potential scope so it is vital that constraints are imposed on the project. A new PC and software will prove a great advantage leaving behind a trusted 7 year old machine. There is a no dedicated budget for the project.

The biggest constraint is time. This is non trivial and has already impacted this blog in that the comments are disabled. Early on the comments facility invited spam.

F) What existing projects and groups does this project need to coordinate with in order to avoid a train wreck?

None. The only legacy commitment are to move the existing pages to an archive that is readily accessible and signposted.

There are however two considerations:

1. Since first identifying Drupal as the platform to adopt, it was at version 4.7. It is now on the brink of version 7.0. This dynamic development environment presents challenges of its own.

2. As already highlighted if the new site is to reach the educational community it will be necessary to take heed of existing Drupal modules and resources, e.g. the DrupalEd distribution, The Scientific Collaboration Framework and assess their suitability - 'off the shelf'.


G) What kind of market and "voice of customer" research (including site metrics) do you already have?

In ten years with the existing site evidence shows that people do not have time to 'get in touch'; more needs to be offered. The existing website is 'failing' in terms of:

• as stated its dated design;
• site metrics - hits;
  
• publishing standards (academic, relevance, timeliness and currency, referencing, styling, semantic markup);
• and user engagement.

Despite the non-trivial constraint of time and website 'stasis' this blog is an emerging as a potential channel of engagement. The clustermaps and recently added 'flags of the world' demonstrate the global appeal of the content here and hopefully the model. Since there is little time for analysis of Google analytics data, the new site will utilise core statistic functionality and contributed modules as available (and proven).


H) What are the roles on the project? For instance, if you're engaging a design vendor what are they delivering vs. what are you delivering to the final mix?

As per the existing site and given budget constraints (i.e. there is none) there are no 'roles' on the project. All are up for grabs and presently rest with me. Hence the appeal of a content management system (Drupal) to ease the design and development burden.

Additional links:

Sun Microsystems blog post:
http://blogs.sun.com/MartinHardee/entry/pretty_good_example_of_a

Drupal

* The good example here is the title of the Sun Microsystems article and not necessarily my answers to the questions.

Image sources:
Drupal Groups
Chess piece:
http://www.mindful-leadership.com/Strategy%20Facilitation.htm