Title: Smart interactions for home healthcare: a semantic shift

Authors: Edgar Rodriguez; Kah Chan

Addresses: School of Design, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand ' School of Design, Victoria University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand

Abstract: The worldwide trend towards home healthcare calls for a semantic shift. Medical devices that assist people to look after themselves now need to establish an appropriate communication loop with the patient. There is no longer a focus on the medical device communicating with the medical practitioner primarily only through denotation of meaning. We suggest that the new communication loop requires the medical device be able to communicate through denotation and connotation of meaning, making information relevant for people's everyday lives, addressing pragmatic and hedonic aspects, and not simply the display of data. This paper analyses a number of medical devices for home healthcare. We suggest a set of criteria that designers can use when designing smart interactions for empowering patients to take care of their health. We also present a number of designs and assess them according to our suggested criteria.

Keywords: semantics; home healthcare; industrial design; media design; interaction design; smart interactions; medical devices; meaning denotation; meaning connotation; home care; patient empowerment.

DOI: 10.1504/IJART.2016.081328

International Journal of Arts and Technology, 2016 Vol.9 No.4, pp.299 - 319

Received: 20 Nov 2014
Accepted: 06 Feb 2015
Published online: 05 Jan 2017 *

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