Background: Research on maternity care often focuses on factors that prevent good communication and collaboration and rarely includes important stakeholders – parents – as co-researchers. To understand how professionals and parents in Dutch maternity care accomplish constructive communication and collaboration, we examined their interactions in the clinic, looking for “good practice”. Methods: We used the video-reflexive ethnographic method in 9 midwifery practices and 2 obstetric units. Findings: We conducted 16 meetings where participants reflected on video recordings of their clinical interactions. We found that informal strategies facilitate communication and collaboration: “talk work” – small talk and humour – and “work beyond words” – familiarity, use of sight, touch, sound, and non-verbal gestures. When using these strategies, participants noted that it is important to be sensitive to context, to the values and feelings of others, and to the timing of care. Our analysis of their ways of being sensitive shows that good communication and collaboration involves “paradoxical care”, e.g., concurrent acts of “regulated spontaneity” and “informal formalities”. Discussion: Acknowledging and reinforcing paradoxical care skills will help caregivers develop the competencies needed to address the changing demands of health care. The video-reflexive ethnographic method offers an innovative approach to studying everyday work, focusing on informal and implicit aspects of practice and providing a bottom up approach, integrating researchers, professionals and parents. Conclusion: Good communication and collaboration in maternity care involves “paradoxical care” requiring social sensitivity and self-reflection, skills that should be included as part of professional training.
In this paper we explore the influence of the physical and social environment (the design space) son the formation of shared understanding in multidisciplinary design teams. We concentrate on the creative design meeting as a microenvironment for studying processes of design communication. Our applied research context entails the design of mixed physical–digital interactive systems supporting design meetings. Informed by theories of embodiment that have recently gained interest in cognitive science, we focus on the role of interactive “traces,” representational artifacts both created and used by participants as scaffolds for creating shared understanding. Our research through design approach resulted in two prototypes that form two concrete proposals of how the environment may scaffold shared understanding in design meetings. In several user studies we observed users working with our systems in natural contexts. Our analysis reveals how an ensemble of ongoing social as well as physical interactions, scaffolded by the interactive environment, grounds the formation of shared understanding in teams. We discuss implications for designing collaborative tools and for design communication theory in general.
In recent decades, a considerable amount of literature on interdisciplinary collaboration has been published. Interdisciplinary collaboration plays an important role in matching services to the individual needs of children and young people, but working interdisciplinary appears to be hard for youth social work professionals. The aim of this scoping review was to identify, analyse, and summarise literature on stimulating interdisciplinary collaboration among social work professionals working with youth. Seven databases were systematically searched (until March 2017), and grey literature was hand‐searched for relevant publications. Included in this review were empirical studies on at least one (future) social work professional working with youth that (a) focused on interventions for or important elements in interdisciplinary collaboration, team development, or teambuilding/work, (b) were conducted in a Western country; (c) met a clearly written method, and (d) were published in English or Dutch. Eighteen publications met the criteria, in which two categories of studies could be identified: focusing on important elements in interdisciplinary collaboration (ten studies) and focusing on interventions (eight studies). From the ten studies on elements, six overarching elements were distinguished that appear to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration. (a) Awareness and understanding of the other discipline; (b) communication and interaction: feedback, reflection, and evaluation; (c) team structure; (d) willingness to work together; (e) shared responsibility/norms, and (f) mutual trust. The interventions found in the eight other studies were divided into three forms: training, organisational interventions, and tools. More support for professionals in interventions is needed to stimulate interdisciplinary collaboration. The six overarching elements found in this review can be used in developing these interventions. Further research is needed to develop, test, and systemically measure interventions in order to help youth social work professionals collaborate successfully in an interdisciplinary manner.
This project addresses the fundamental societal problem that encryption as a technique is available since decades, but has never been widely adopted, mostly because it is too difficult or cumbersome to use for the public at large. PGP illustrates this point well: it is difficult to set-up and use, mainly because of challenges in cryptographic key management. At the same time, the need for encryption has only been growing over the years, and has become an urgent problem with stringent requirements – for instance for electronic communication between doctors and patients – in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and with systematic mass surveillance activities of internationally operating intelligence agencies. The interdisciplinary project "Encryption for all" addresses this fundamental problem via a combination of cryptographic design and user experience design. On the cryptographic side it develops identity-based and attribute-based encryption on top of the attribute-based infrastructure provided by the existing IRMA-identity platform. Identity-based encryption (IBE) is a scientifically well-established technique, which addresses the key management problem in an elegant manner, but IBE has found limited application so far. In this project it will be developed to a practically usable level, exploiting the existing IRMA platform for identification and retrieval of private keys. Attribute-based encryption (ABE) has not reached the same level of maturity yet as IBE, and will be a topic of further research in this project, since it opens up attractive new applications: like a teacher encrypting for her students only, or a company encrypting for all employees with a certain role in the company. On the user experience design side, efforts will be focused on making these encryption techniques really usable (i.e., easy to use, effective, efficient, error resistant) for everyone (e.g., also for people with disabilities or limited digital skills). To do so, an iterative, human-centred and inclusive design approach will be adopted. On a fundamental level, scientific questions will be addressed, such as how to promote the use of security and privacy-enhancing technologies through design, and whether and how usability and accessibility affect the acceptance and use of encryption tools. Here, theories of nudging and boosting and the unified theory of technology acceptance and use (known as UTAUT) will serve as a theoretical basis. On a more applied level, standards like ISO 9241-11 on usability and ISO 9241-220 on the human-centred design process will serve as a guideline. Amongst others, interface designs will be developed and focus groups, participatory design sessions, expert reviews and usability evaluations with potential users of various ages and backgrounds will be conducted, in a user experience and observation laboratory available at HAN University of Applied Sciences. In addition to meeting usability goals, ensuring that the developed encryption techniques also meet national and international accessibility standards will be a particular point of focus. With respect to usability and accessibility, the project will build on the (limited) usability design experiences with the mobile IRMA application.
Globally, we face the urgent task of the transition to a climate neutral and circular society. Biobased materials are regenerative and add considerably less to the carbon stock in the atmosphere. Therefore they get high priority in several missions of the KIA theme “Energy transition and Sustainability”. In recent years significant progress has been made in biobased materials technology. In the “Circular Biobased Delta” region the Universities of Applied Sciences have grown into strong research partners in this field. However, successful business cases are few and society reacts only hesitantly. Accelerating the transition to biobased materials asks for a strategic move to a truly interdisciplinary collaboration. In response, in the Living Ecosystem programme, technological, economic and societal researchers from the three Universities of Applied Sciences (HZ, RUAS, Avans) join to form a core group. Together they will align and extend their research in shared topics such as biobased ingredients, circular building, and bioplastics. Around these topics, cross-sectoral communities within the existing regional ecosystem will be organised, connected and called upon to articulate interdisciplinary research projects and valorise the outcomes. The partners have different levels of achievement together forming a strong research group. They will share their experiences to collectively improve the volume, impact and quality of their research. In doing so they aim to become leaders within their separate disciplines and collectively evolve into an (inter)nationally recognised top-rank research community. The core group of researchers is assisted by a strong consortium, whose members represent the different topics and functions in the ecosystem. The consortium will advise the core group in defining and valorising their research. The regional ecosystem already hosts many “field labs”. The programme aims to create focus in their utilisation for an impactful programme of development, education and communication activities.
The primary objective of this research is to develop the new practical methodology of "Vocalising Resonance", as a development of existing methods. The approach intends to involve artists and citizens in a multi-sensory engagement with their surrounding environment, by collectively utilizing the 'physical', non-semantic voice as a tool for communication. This methodology's creation is rooted in the application of artistic research to well-formulated arguments within contemporary humanities studies. It also incorporates existing approaches for engaging with sound and voice in a multisensory and multidisciplinary manner. Musicologist, Nina Eidsheim argues that music research should not solely focus on the figure of sound, but should also delve into the materiality of sound as vibration (Eidsheim, Sensing Sound). Similarly, this research aims to explore the voice as an experience connected to the whole body and senses, rather than simply hearing. Several existing strategies offer starting points. The second objective of this research is to investigate how the proposed methodology of "Vocalising Resonance" may have a transformative impact on participants' consciousness, by increasing their exposure to diversity and facilitating their realisation that persons in the literal meaning of the word are “the speaking through - sonare + per- the masks that make up our social selves”(Scapp, A Question of Voice). Broadening the scope beyond traditional norms, the project paves the way for a more inclusive, sensorially rich understanding of performing arts, inviting a holistic approach that goes beyond typical categorisations, enhancing the immersive nature of performances. It prompts reflections on the significance of an audience to define a voice, the essence of a voice irrespective of language, and how the non-semantic use of voice serves as a powerful interdisciplinary communication tool within abstract performance contexts. This process seeks to offer a new perspective and transform our practices.
