The ethnographic research at WeMake is finally delivering some first outcomes.
The first meeting out of three held place on the 12th july. It was a useful set to present the aim of the research design and the methodology.
By my side, I could share the academic background about STS (Science, Technology & Society) and my experience in two different contexts of healthcare (hospital and university). Then, it came the time to present the first insight of the research as experience and explaining how I have started combining and giving meaning to data collected on the field. A matrix about online/offline and design/making practices has been helpful to map the different and many practices enacted by the staff involved in opencare at WeMake. Such practices happen mostly in a hybrid integrated space of physical and digital actions, where applications and software are implied in the pursuit of tasks. Some members of the staff work sometimes remotely and videoconferencing is rather a common practice. Although WeMake workplace is definitely a technological environment, the human element seems still important in finding mistakes or re-schedule and re-arrange things to be done.
Interesting questions were asked about the research and the involvement of WeMake in the opencare project.
A second part of the presentation was scheduled about working in groups on the published elements (pictures, sounds and notes). Anyway, a change of the program happened spontaneously given the matter of the meeting: understanding how daily morbid living is being changed in and by WeMake practices. Maker in residence and Openrampette were mentioned as having an important part in the development of the qualitative data of the research given their experimental and participative design parts.
Thereafter, the participants started an interesting discussion about the role of maker spaces in redefining the concept of care in different sets and social worlds. There were two key elements to boost interesting discussion about how roles and rules are felt as costraint not only by patients and laypeople, but by social and healthcare services themselves.