Focus-Shift: Interaction and Expertise Level

The goal of this research is to investigate what happens when artefacts mediate interaction. To do this we investigated nurse’s interaction during the bandaging process in order to understand better how an artefact enhances user’s experiences.

To maintain research rigour we applied a triangulation approach that links observations of current procedures, talk-aloud protocol during interaction and retrospective interviews. Using software to aid our analysis of the videos we produced diagrammatic maps of their interaction. The maps allowed us to see that some nurses bandage more intuitively than others. Nurses who bandage intuitively assemble long sequences of bandaging actions while nurses who bandage less intuitively “focus-shift” in between bandaging actions. We argue that nurses who bandage intuitively demonstrate greater expertise than nurses who do not. We discuss these differences and explore how different levels of expertise can influence how mediated interaction takes place. Finally, we introduced how knowledge generated from this research can be transferred to the design domain, interaction and interface design in particular, and contribute to the design process as a whole.

Keywords:
Expertise; Focus-Shift; Tacit Knowledge; Interaction Design; Interface Design; Nursing