The Sociotechnical Mediation of Lower-Income Pregnancy: A User-Centered Approach to Improving a HCI Design Space
Open Access
- Author:
- Peyton, Tamara
- Graduate Program:
- Information Sciences and Technology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 07, 2016
- Committee Members:
- Andrea H Tapia, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Andrea H Tapia, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Lynette Marie Yarger, Committee Member
Jessica Nicole Kropczynski, Committee Member
Michelle Lynn Frisco, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Pregnancy
HCI
Design
Sociotechnical Design
Mobile Design
Health
Qualitative Research
Informatics - Abstract:
- Developing and delivering contextually-sensitive user experiences in sociotechnical systems geared at helping lower-income women manage their pregnancies requires understanding the human, technological, and the sociotechnical perspectives that are embedded in the mediation of the experience. Yet most digital systems and tools for pregnancy management treat pregnancy experiences as problems: problems of health, problems of socioeconomic status, and problems of consumer power. Through my depiction of the design space, I give attention to specific situational contexts of lower-income pregnancy. Using a contextual qualitative research approach, and the results of three research studies, I identify the set of information, situations, and interactions of lower-income women around pregnancy-related interactions and management. I detail expectant women’s adoption of technology tools and digital information for guiding their pregnancy management. I focus on the relations between information and social interaction needs relative to the impacts of pregnancy on subjective impressions of wellness, and on the expectant woman’s abilities to adjust her life and her coping strategies to the pregnancy experience. Framing the experience of lower-income pregnancy as a sociotechnical experience that is heavily mediated by digital and mobile technologies, I employ an action process stance towards opportunities and challenges within lower-income women’s lived experience of pregnancy as a structure for my response to the sociotechnical design opportunity. I provide a set of eight evidence-based design considerations which incorporate the dimensionality of everyday pregnancy experiences into a revised design space. Through my research findings and my eight design recommendations, I offer three contributions to the fields of mobile human-computer interaction design specifically, and the domains of human-computer interaction and medical informatics generally. My first contribution is an articulation of the mobile app design space of lower-income pregnancy. My second contribution provides a scope of the gaps, oversights and issues with existing mobile applications for pregnancy, relative to lower-income women. My third contribution is a set of eight design considerations which reflect a sociotechnical approach to viewing lower-income pregnancy as inter-dependent sets of interactions between humans, technology and information. By reshaping the digital design space of lower income pregnancy, and taking into account the offered design considerations, the intended outcome of a new mobile app for lower-income pregnant women would be increased feelings of pregnancy success, improved information management capacities, and better emotional and physical coping strategies within pregnancy and throughout women’s lives.