I am Karen Wieckert and I am currently a post doc in the Section on Medical
Informatics at the Stanford School of Medicine. I (finally) finished my
dissertaiton in June -- Design under Uncertainty: Engaging the context of
use in the design of expert systems -- from the Computers, Organizations,
Policy, and Society Program in the Information and Computer Science
Department at UC-Irvine. That study involved three comparative case studies
of the design of expert systems in corporations. The major finding of that
study involved elucidating the package of skills, materials, and tools that
designers use in designing artifacts, and understanding how elements of
that package can be differentially successful and unsuccessful in making
the artifact fit with aspects of the context of use. Failure and success
are never pure, neat, or complete.
My primary interests are in studying the design of computational artifacts
(computer-based and their extensions) in order to better understand how the
`context of use' is or is not enaged during the design process in the
`context of design.'. I both observe, participate as a designer, and teach
in a Human Computer Interaction curriculum. Currently I am involved in a
project attempting to create a decision support tool to be used by
clinicians at county health centers involved in the care of people with HIV
disease. The evolving system has been taken up somewhat enthusiastically
in one site, but not in the other. I am currently attempting to understand
this difference and its implications for the design of other medical
applications impinging upon the medical chart. In this case, the designers
are attempting to make a nearly complete computer-based medical record
available at the clinics. The complexitiy of that task has been daunting
to the project as ever more layers of technical/social concerns, issues,
structures, conflicts, etc. are revealed. I would rather chop onions -- it
involves less crying...
My address is:
Karen Wieckert, Post Doctoral Fellow
Section on Medical Informatics
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford, CA 94305-5479
wieckert@camis.stanford.edu
(415)725-3389
(415)725-7944 (fax)
(415)723-8222 #5323 (beeper)
(510) I won't tell you (mobile phone number)
and a home phone number! Constant communication is my game!
ka:ren