A5TeamMandJ
Last modified by HCCF Grader on 2010/09/28 23:18
A5TeamMandJ
To-Do
- Please work as a group (minimum: 2 members; max: 6 members — discuss the answers between your group members) and submit one answer as a group (clearly identifying the members of your group)
- Choose a web site and claim it as yours by editing the list on the Meta-Design Sites page (first come – first served)
- Describe your understanding of meta-design in your own words (not copying a paragraph from a paper or a website)
- Meta-design is a design where a framework of a usable system is created, which might operate in a standalone sense, but actually encourages the end user to create adaptations and design adjustments to better suit their personal needs, and make the resulting design more efficient and suited to their own work processes. Different people doing the same work with a system may create different designs – in this way it’s more than the usual idea of a collaborative design effort, where teams of individuals all work together to produce a single final design. Instead, each user is encouraged to collaborate through the structured design to create an individualized design. I believe a good example would be with user interface design – from the simple aspects of being able to adjust the layout and point size of a font for people with bad eyesight or cognitive difficulties associated with crowded pages, through to organizing information on the page differently, with higher priority information first. This might be demonstrated through some new email applications with conversation threading, etc.
- Setting: you are talking to another student who is interested in design; how would you explain to her/him the strengths and weakness of meta-design as a design methodology
- Strengths: Meta Design allows each user to have input on how the tool they’re using functions. The user doesn’t have to learn someone else’s preferences and in fact can work within the original design to adapt the tool to suit themselves. Depending upon the design and the user’s interest in being involved in the design process, it’s as close to being custom-built as the user requires. In order for the user to be able to actively engage with the design, the tool has to feature an inclusive and inviting design that the user can readily see is able to be adapted to their needs. When the scope of adaptation is clear, and the user actively engages with the design to adapt it, then the likelihood they will be very happy with the tool is increased substantially. In fact, they are likely to feel a sense of ‘ownership’ and loyalty to the tool they ‘created’. Weaknesses: Designers typically believe they know best on what design a tool should have. Ideally, they have done the background research and know the ‘best’ way of doing things. Unfortunately, this is not always the ‘best’ way for a user. If there are flaws in the design structure, the designer should not believe that the user’s input will make up for them. Additionally, if the user is reluctant to be involved in the development of a personalized tool, then its functionality will always be limited, and/or seem limiting to the user. Finally, while the 'wisdom of the crowd' hopes to offer the best information rising from many participants, the truth is that the areas where the crowd congregate, such as 'help forums' are cluttered with posts of people having the same problem, not ever finding, nor offering a solution. Quite often they seem to have a cascade of negative experience rather than positive outcomes.
- Which Web site did you select?
- patientslikeme.com
- Analyze your chosen web site from a meta-design perspective:
- The website patientslikeme.com is an online environment in which patients suffering from 16+ diseases post about their symptoms and various treatments theyve tried. Various data is collected from the users and analyzed by the systems to system to provide a custom interface based upon the user/patients parameters. There are also various open forums available to the user in which the patient is free to post about their individual experiences, offer support, and research different treatment options. The system allows for patients to consult 'expert' patients that have already made the medical decisions that the new patient faces. However these patients are not always trained in medical sciences nor posess an objective view on the matter. It was found that on amazon.com, a small number of useres accounted for a large number of votes on ratings.1 Although medicicne is quite different from book ratings, this could be representative of the amount of time different people in a population would spend on a user contributed site. This can not be avoided in a meta-design website because the decision to post, or provide a detailed history, comes down to the individuals perception of the costs/benifits of posting. With that in mind, the system also creates new statistics based upon patients feedback of existing treatments. This information can be used to find new trends in medications which can spur new research. For example, 24% of patientslikeme found that the drug Lexapro led to a decreased libido (n=149); while the clinical trials had only a 3% decreased libido(n=715)2. This site provides a great variety of research tools for the patient to access but is fundamentally flawed because the meta-design only takes into acount the users that have made an effort to provide detailed information.
The only way to eliminate this imbalance is to create a meta-design in which the costs and benefits associated with system interaction is interpreted equally amongst all users. Pandora radio, at its core, uses a simple feedback system (thumbs up, thumb down, or no action) to generate playlists based upon the users preferences. This information is then analyzed against other similar users music tastes to generate more songs of interest. Although the number of times a user may thumb up, down, or have no preference varies from user to user its minimilistic aproach to contributing to the music genome project allows many users who normally wouldnt participate to do so. The passive (replace with real word) nature of this system can be contrasted with the more active(replacewithrealword) enviroment of the patientslikeme website.
Additional references:
- The power of social networking in medicine
- Please provide the names of your group members who contributed to this answer.
- Michael Schneider and Joanne White
