Context Considerations
The Transcultural Identity of Batik: The Relationship Between Art and Design
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Raffaella Trocchianesi
The paper illustrates a research project carried out by the Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano, in the Design for Cultural Heritage field. The research studies the multicultural and transcultural elements of the Batik practice in the textile field, and it proposes a methodological tool in order to foster an intercultural communication and use. The paper will be divided into three parts. The first looks at the relationship between cultural design and art in the textile field; the second the role of the design discipline as a facilitator of innovation in transcultural processes; the third the methodology of the research project. The method is focused on four steps: the state of the art related to the transcultural routes of the Batik (Netherland, Africa, ect.) and cross-fertilization paths (from craftmenship to industry, from art to design); the collection of case studies where artists and designers esspress and re-interpret the Batik; the creation of a thematic tool: a sort of critical, dynamic and digital archive with which curators, designers, and artists can find data about the batik (in terms of patterns, techniques, ect) and use it in order to trigger new concepts and transcultural contaminations; the creative workshop (that involved artists and designers) where veryfing this tool that was used in order to develop some experimental interpretations of the Batik in different kinds of products.
Cognitive Ergonomics for Designing Medical Devices: Developing a Tool for Designing Correct Physical and Cognitive Interaction in a Hospital Context
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mariia Zolotova
This research is conducted within a Ph.D. program in Product Design and is focused on the healthcare sector. In particular, it investigates the problems around the interaction with medical devices in a hospital context. Specifically, the objective is to develop a tool for designing a correct physical and cognitive interaction with medical devices taking into consideration both doctors and nurses as well as patients as final users and the surrounding context. In order to bridge both the design problems and issues of the healthcare sector, the tools and methods of cognitive ergonomics have been chosen as the discipline studies mental processes that are affecting interactions among humans and other elements of a system. The literature review has led to a thesis that states that a set of certain ‘cognitive ergonomics features’ may represent all the aspects useful to design an efficient and psychologically comfortable interaction with medical devices. Therefore, the paper discusses and demonstrates the dynamics that unite the 'features' and analyzes how they are represented in medical devices through a scheme of the interrelations of the 'features' and through the analysis of best practices. The result of this analysis is to estimate the validity of the ‘features’ to then develop a design tool to be applied in real contexts (hospital).
