HCC: Small: Culture,Technology and Wellness: Approaches to Improving the Health and Wellness of US Americans

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The goal of this research is to examine how the incorporation of culturally specific values into health-related ICTs might increase the likelihood of their adoption, as well as how those culturally specific values bear on their practical use. This research sits at the intersection of two research thrusts that are gaining momentum within Human Centered Computing, and contribute to the intellectual development of both. First, this proposed research contributes to the human-centered health ICT research domain by explicitly accounting for culturally specific values in the design of applications. Medical evidence in the U.S. shows that health interventions will likely not succeed unless they are culturally relevant. And yet, little research to date has attempted to explicitly incorporate culturally specific values into design, or has evaluated value-sensitive systems in use. Results of this research will show how different values can be designed into health ICTs, and how that affects their usage. It will also surface the values implicit in current health ICTs. Second, there is a body of research (largely in Human Computer Interaction for Development (HCI4D)) that argues that culture must be explicitly taken into account in the design of ICTs for them to succeed. When it is accounted for, significant innovations can result. This literature makes a compelling case for explicitly accounting for cultures outside the United States, but simultaneously points to a surprising omission: knowledge about the ICT implications of cultural diversity within the United States. This research addresses that gap by showing how explicit attention to cultural values can lead to transformative socio-technical systems for health and wellness. Further, as has been reported within the HCI4D literature, focus on culturally specific values also provides opportunities to reflect on assumptions embedded within the methods, frameworks and systems that guide human-centered research. The project will focus on three areas, each answering different research questions. 1) Impact of value discovery and the design and evaluation of ICTs that incorporate those values. The idea that systems have values is an established research finding within HCC. Value Sensitive Design (VSD) explicitly argues for accounting for values in the design of systems. The proposed work will bring research on values in design into the health domain by empirically identifying values and designing them into ICTs that provide culturally relevant health information. Evaluations of each intervention will focus on adoption and rejection patterns with particular focus on use (or not) as related to the values designed into the system. 2) Impact of culturally distinct patterns of collaboration. Collaboration is an essential component of health; support of friends and family complements an individual?s health management. However, public health researchers find that collaboration, particularly cooperation, extends beyond the family to the community in various sub-cultures. These results suggest that opportunities exist to refine our understanding of collaboration, by asking questions about the nature and patterns of interactions surrounding health practices. Questions focus on what is being shared, who is communicating with whom and how, and where ICTs have the most promise for supporting existing modes of collaboration as well as developing entirely new ones.3) How infrastructure differences present an opportunity for transformative solutions. Public health research suggests that culturally tailored health innovations are particularly important in low-income minority communities. But reports suggest that ICT adoption is increasing among these communities, and also that different types of systems are being appropriated because of the differences in infrastructure.