Stories of User Appropriation

布鲁内尔大学和地平线数字经济研究正在与iHealth Partnership、The Alloy和IDC（工业设计咨询公司）中小企业就“用户使用的故事”进行合作，旨在通过将设计戏剧技术与数字化开放创新平台相结合，将创意经济中有关创意创新过程的知识转移到更广泛的经济中，让用户参与设计过程。通过这种方式，该项目将促进以用户为中心的设计、戏剧和电影、数字经济和中小企业之间的研究交流。该项目将重点关注医疗保健领域，这是KE实践中特别适合创新的领域。长期以来，用户研究一直被认为是产品设计的重要组成部分，因此有很多技术可以让用户参与到设计过程中。如果执行得当，它可以缩短上市时间，提高市场接受度，减少发布后的支持/修订。然而，对于中小企业来说，让客户参与到设计过程中往往是有问题的，因为任何传统的以用户为中心的设计过程都是昂贵且耗时的。目前在医疗保健部门采用的以用户为中心的技术往往是不合适的，并且可能无法收集新产品设计所需的数据类型。当用户进入诸如家庭和社区等社会动态空间时，还存在进一步的问题，在这些空间中，很难考虑到复杂的背景问题。人们普遍认为，“创意经济”作为创造力的焦点，在整个经济的创新中发挥着特别重要的作用。这个项目是关于创意经济和保健产品制造商之间的知识交流。这将通过共同开发数字平台来实现，这些平台使以用户为中心的设计技术易于访问，从而提供一个关于创意企业和医疗保健公司之间B2B联系的案例研究。医疗保健制造商在考虑如何、在哪里以及为什么使用他们的产品时面临许多障碍，这些障碍已被证明对英国医疗设备开发中占很大比例的中小企业有更大的影响。已查明与此有关的若干具体问题：一项对英国医疗设备制造商的访谈研究发现，许多制造商不愿意与用户进行正式接触，因为他们认为，从这种接触中收集到的数据质量不值得为克服接触用户的重大实际和道德困难所付出的努力。然而，这可能与本研究的第二个发现有关：这些制造商使用的方法（即基于非正式讨论的方法）不合适，不太可能收集设计所需的数据类型。2. 最近对开发一种新的医学成像设备期间的用户研究和参与情况进行的案例研究确定了一些个人、组织和系统障碍，这些障碍阻碍了将用户研究的结果充分纳入开发。一个重要的发现是，向制造商反馈（详细和定性的）用户数据的方式不能有效地传达信息的范围、深度和重要性。这两个关键的发展问题将支持我们的数字平台的发展，具体的案例研究框架：痴呆症患者面临的挑战的范围和多样性，以及产品和技术干预的机会，以支持家庭独立生活。

Brunel University and Horizon Digital Economy Research is collaborating with iHealth Partnership, The Alloy and IDC (Industrial Design Consultancy) SMEs on 'Stories of User Appropriation', which aims to transfer knowledge from the creative economy about creative innovation processes to the wider economy, by combining design-drama techniques with digitally-enabled open innovation platforms to engage users in the design process. Through this, the project will stimulate exchange between research from user-centred design, drama and film, as well as from the digital economy, and SMEs. This project will focus on the healthcare domain as a particularly appropriate area for innovation in KE practices.User research has long been accepted as an important part of product design, for which there is a whole host of techniques to engage users in the design process. If implemented correctly it can reduce time to market, increase market acceptance and reduce post release support/revision. However, engaging customers in the design process is often problematic for SMEs, as any traditional user centered design process can be expensive and time consuming to implement. User-centred techniques currently adopted in the healthcare sector are often inappropriate and can fail to collect the type of data that is needed to inform the design of new products. Further issues exist when engaging users in socially dynamic spaces such as households and communities, where it is difficult to allow for the range of complex contextual issues.There is a widespread belief that the 'creative economy', as a focal point for creativity, has a particularly important role to play in innovation throughout the economy. This project is about knowledge exchange between the creative economy and healthcare product manufacturers. This will be achieved through the co-development of digital platforms that make user-centred design techniques accessible, and thereby providing a case study on B2B linkages between creative businesses and healthcare firms. Healthcare manufacturers face many barriers when considering how, where and why their products will be used, and these barriers have been shown to have a greater effect on the SMEs that are responsible for a large proportion of medical device development in the UK. A number of specific issues related to this have been identified:1. An interview study of UK medical device manufacturers found that many are reluctant to engage formally with users as they believe that the effort required to overcome the significant practical and ethical difficulties of accessing users is not merited by the quality of the data that they collect from this engagement. This however may be related to a second finding of this study: that the methods used by these manufacturers (namely informal discussion-based methods) were inappropriate and unlikely to collect the type of data that is needed to inform design. 2. A recent case study of user research and involvement during the development of a new medical imaging device identified a number of individual, organisational and system barriers that functioned to prevent the results of the user research being fully integrated into development. One significant finding was that the way that the (detailed and qualitative) user data was fed back to manufacturers was not effective in conveying the range, depth and importance of the information. These two key developmental problems will underpin the development of our digital platforms, framed by a specific case study: the range and variety of the challenges that face people living with dementia, and the opportunities for product and technology intervention to support independent living at home.