#boundary objects

“Because boundary objects bring different social worlds together without requiring consensus, understanding the green scarves as boundary objects allows us to rethink the tensions of complex social movements when pursuing policy changes.

Green scarves are more than a mere icon to symbolize the movement for decriminalizing abortion. They are also a device enabling very different communities to cooperate without needing either understanding or agreement (from prostitution abolitionists, indigenous feminists, some Peronists, anarchists, black feminists, trans groups, health activists, Catholics for the right to decide, scientists, policy makers, mothers, experts, poor classes, and so on). Representing a variety of theories, experiences, and political goals, the green headscarf functions as an infrastructure that coordinates multiplicity by establishing a loosely defined common. It works because it achieves the articulation of different levels of knowledge and vindication, from very deep and heated debates within communities to more vague conversations and the activation of sorority, intimacy, and complicity rather than agreement within bigger marches and celebrations. Neither level is static; rather they rearticulate each other, strengthening continuation and reflexivity by leaving discrepancies within the spaces where they can be productive.

Articulation

The green headscarves are more than a mere icon to symbolize a group and, indeed, they do not represent the communities that wear it but rather the practices of collaboration and articulation. As a boundary object, the scarf articulates different levels of knowledge and vindication across local and transnational politics, across individuals, communities, and the abortion movement, and across different demands and regimes of truth.”

Findings on Ice from PARS offers a refreshing diversity of voices that contextualize one topic, ice, in different ways. Part of their “Atlas of Creative Thinking,” PARS’ goal was to “[bring] together artists and scientists to share their vision on wide-ranging topics.”

On contextualizing ice (from their site):

Findings on Ice features the work of artists and scientists whose binding interest is ice. Their findings range from the quirky, humorous and beautiful, to the mind-bogglingly complex and disturbing.

Last week began with a lot of running around among different locations of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. As part of our domestic utilization research, we interviewed a variety of Penn employees to test our assumptions in order to form a valid experiment. The usage of boundary objects made our interviews way more efficient and clear. After presenting the employees with a brief of the project and what we have found till now, we introduced them to all the prototypes quickly. A detailed conversation about each of them followed.

  While it was very easy for people to visualize possible solutions, these conversations revealed some new and confirmed our older findings. The pictures below could speak more than words to support the previous statement:

    Following each input from the user with a why led us to some more discoveries. In our previous research we found that informal social networks are one of the strongest factors in choosing a doctor in Penn system, however these networks have to be more organic and natural in there formations. When it came to getting direct recommendations from the co-workers, people clearly expressed trust issues. There was also a prominent concern about their privacy as majority of people refused to talk face to face with a person (care expert) when it came to choosing a doctor. While people laid stress on being able to talk to a human over a helpline, they were concerned about that person being able to give their name a face when it came to meeting a care expert.

    A very important aspect of this research was that till now in our research we had found issues related to finding a doctor and logistics around them. What we came to know from these prototypes is that there is a larger issue of scheduling. People do not get appointments easily and there is a wait time for months at some practices. Our idea for finding a doctor then re-framed to scheduling in order to load balance among popular and newly acquired practices, so that people could get easy and quick appointments. At our interviews with people from scheduling department, people stressed on the fact that employees have no idea of the wait time and it’s often so long, they prefer to get their care elsewhere. Our other interviews only confirmed the issue. Almost everyone added Find a doctor: By nearest appointment time to our mobile app prototype.

    There was a general concern around the ownership of content of the recommendations if provided. As it might just reveal the negativity in this large health system that could have a harmful impact on the organization. “We need to safeguard our physician reputation”, as per an employee. Also, a discussion around the starring system of recommendation vs. the comment one led us to understand different preferences which were also dependent on the age, gender and role of the employees. Another interesting reason people turn away from using the present web service for scheduling is the unavailability of detailed expertise and background of the doctor, types of patients they accept and the wait time for new patients. Although people preferred a technology based solution as it could be on their schedule, the end goal for the technology (as per the users) should be for them to connect to someone who could answer their extra questions or just as a reassurance and added trust. We can never ignore the importance of a human interaction, can we? It always has to be by the people, for the people to the people.

Revisiting our brainstorming session to come up with more concepts for prototyping, we redefined three of them to fit into our approach. Focusing on ways to find a doctor using the informal social networks as a means to the end, we wanted to present to users three different ways of interaction. Another brainstorming session with my team-mate led to consolidate three interactions that could be developed into prototypes. To validate our assumptions, we decided to present the users with the three prototypes and spark a conversation about why they would choose one over the other, or what they liked about a particular prototype and what not.

    To develop a hierarchy of qualities according to preference and facilitate a meaningful conversation, we needed a more interactive prototype. This time coincided with our second Design Sprint for the semester which circled around communities of practice, communities of interest and boundary objects and their usage in design process.

  ‘Boundary objects are objects which are both plastic enough to adapt to local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites. They are weakly structured in common use, and become strongly structured in individual-site use. These objects may be abstract or concrete. They have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation.’

  Our aim now was to create these boundary objects that allow us as the designers to build a shared understanding with the community of stakeholders we are engaging through the project. Our three final prototypes fell into three categories of interactions: Human-Technology- Human, Human- Analog artifact- Human and Human- Human (direct). One  could say that this was another form of research, but our hope was also to find out which interaction users prefer in this context and why. Starting from paper prototypes, we designed these boundary objects as fun representations of scenarios where people could move things around according to what experience they find perfect. Lots of magnetic buttons, clay and what not to provide the employees a chance to not only respond and re-arrange but re-create the prototypes if they wanted. We were also looking for what kind of details people look while finding a doctor so suggestive as well as empty elements were provided in each prototype.

  Paper prototyping

  Scenario building

  Our final deliverable as decided now would be recommendation for an ‘experiment’ by the end of this project. An experiment would constitute the qualities that lie higher in the hierarchy of preferences with a measurable outcome. Thus, we would be providing Penn with a framework with measuring points that could be launched to test outcomes and be implemented if successful. So, what would be the qualities of our experiment?

Trading zone: la noción de trading zone (zona o espacio de intercambio) ... que miembros de las distintas comunidades colaboren fructíferamente. Y lo hacen en un espacio de intercambio (una trading zone) al interior del cual se transaccionan objetos, estándares y métricas que, conyunturalmente, no ofrecen problemas de consenso. En algunos momentos, respecto de algunas tareas y proyectos, los científicos se ponen manos a la obra sin problematizar en exceso sus conveniencias (vs. sus desavenencias). Ello ocurre en ciertos lugares y medios, muchas veces imprevistos: en la cafetería, en una lista de correo, una wiki, en el ‘lugar común’ que pueda representar la dirección de correo de una persona querida por todos, por ejemplo.

Esos objetos, e instrumentalia en un sentido más genérico, que abren puntos de encuentro y avenencia entre personas o culturas dispares, son conocidos también como boundary objects u objetos fronterizos...