ACRC research fellow Jacob Sheahan recently attended and presented at the biannual Design4Health conference in Sheffield, UK. Image Equilibrium in a time of permacrisis was the subject of this iteration of the Design4Health conference, seeing me head down to Sheffield Hallam University to connect with a network of designers and creative practitioners, researchers, clinicians, policymakers, and users, previously displaced by the pandemic. For me, attending this event was an opportunity to connect with old friends and new colleagues and be inspired by design practice that actively informs and is shaped by healthcare innovation. A keynote framed each of the three days, each reflecting on the challenges at the intersection of design and health: Ken Arnold, Director of Medical Museion, brought lessons from a research museum into view, pushing us to triangulate our interests rather than work in polarity, meeting complexity with complexity; Lorna Ross, of Mayo Clinic fame, reflected on a career in designing for healthcare through the idea that medical innovation is far too often a redistribution of complexity to different parts of the system; with cross-disciplinary Art researcher Lise Autogen on the final morning detailing efforts her efforts in Greenland to bring the climate research conducted there to local communities. Four strands of presenting complemented each day, with silos focused on Re-addressing Power imbalances, Contexts of Care, and Technologies in Health, alongside Design Pedagogies and Methods. Reaffirming the diversity and quality of research that overlays design and health, we heard from the art-based efforts of co-designers and psychologists to support those with eating disorders during the pandemic, alongside allied health professionals reflecting on employing co-design in the creating technologies with people of all abilities. Image With a growing need to map complexity, we heard from design professionals charting systematic approaches to improving our healthcare ecosystem alongside proposed ways of cognitively mapping the growing number of transdisciplinary projects that span the space. Materiality was not absent from talks, with design researchers offering a tangible and playful exploration of mental wellbeing through art installation HappyHere, or an intervention supporting clinicians to meaningfully and positively develop tools to address the subjective nature of paediatric pain. The work of the Advanced Care Research Centre and Design Informatics was also on show, not only in my own talk exploring ecologies of care in later life but also in recently completed projects as part of the UKRI’s Healthy Ageing Challenge. Representing the team that addressed Supporting Healthy Ageing at Work (SHAW), Kiersten Hay provided detailed insights from exploring the ‘hidden health’ issues that tend to be overlooked in the workplace. Meanwhile, Sarah Kettely and Jiashuo Liu represented the sister project Healthier Working Lives (HWL), speaking about the role of the Ripple Framework in facilitating engagement with the adult care workforce, with Liu speaking about the use of future newspapers as an exemplary platform for discussing and imagining the future together. As a space that enables, fosters, and speaks to a wide and rich group of researchers, clinicians, and practitioners, Design4Health is a unique conference that plays an important role in the design research landscape. It was great to see a wealth of emerging PhD research across the conference and link up with Scottish colleagues from Dundee and Glasgow and colleagues from down under – Monash, Swinburne, and Queensland universities. It’s a testament to the team at Lab4Living, led by Clair Craig and Paul Chamberlain, that the conference has only grown in popularity post-pandemic, bringing presenters from the Americas, Oceania, and beyond. Image Publication date 08 Jul, 2024
