Indigenous Design: healthcare professional using self-produced video in articulating and developing work practices

Erling Björgvinsson, Per-Anders Hillgren


The article discusses a design project at an intensive
care unit with the intent to support informal learning
that ended in a solution where the staffs produce short
movies on work practice procedures that are made
available on handheld computers. The making and
reviewing of the videos proved to be a valuable tool in
indigenously designing new work procedures. The
article begins with looking at how the staffs design
local routines. We argue that local rather than top-
down standardizations are more useful, since they are
tailored to the local needs and given meaning through
participation. We then take a closer look at three
examples of self-produced videos and what kind of
collaborative discussions about work procedures they
facilitated. With the help of the concept of “framing”
the concept of “reification/participation” and
“conscription device” we will discuss why the self-
produced videos worked well to facilitate continuous
learning and could provide “softer” more local and
ephemeral standards from the bottom up perspective.
We conclude that the staff have adopted a
complementary reflective practice building on their
tradition of indigenously designing their practice, but
now equipped with a visual representation that are
akin to engineers and designers way of using
drawings as conscription devices.

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