[ Text Version of "New and Relevant Knowledge" ]

New and Relevant Knowledge

The only research result worth the name is new knowledge. New knowledge is continuously generated, inside and outside universities. However, for it to be possible to determine what constitutes new knowledge, one has to be able to distinguish, make visible, and cogently describe existing knowledge as well as the new knowledge. All in a manner which can be documented.

Accordingly, CERTEC's research (like all good research) has to result in better ways of:

• systematizing and accumulating

• articulating new questions

• handling methods and data in ways which can be clearly demonstrated

• generalizing on the basis of experience gained

• constantly asking whether there are other approaches which may make the results appear different

CERTEC insists that the knowledge we are looking for, besides being new, must be relevant to the field. Right away, this makes things more difficult. There is an intrinsic complexity to the chain between the individual, physical impairment, perceived handicap, physical environment, and social context. This complexity cannot be disregarded; it has to be brought into the research itself. If not, the knowledge will be new, but hardly relevant to the field, and accordingly not very important.

It is delicate work trying to distinguish “researchable" problems in rehabilitation engineering. Our neighboring departments who focus on applied technology cannot be our role models. By “applied" they usually mean that the department develops applications for technology. However, it is rare for them to study the actual application, the actual use, outside the department. A focus such as CERTEC's - on the user rather than the use of the technology- is unusual in the environment in which we work.

Originally the most user friendly aspect of Isaac, a personal digital assistant, was that it had a specific target group: people with cognitive disabilities. It was in itself remarkable that, for a period of time, we managed to make technology which is attractive to everyone available only to those who usually come last: people with cognitive disabilities. But in order for it to be possible to produce new, relevant knowledge, Isaac had to go down a long, winding road before finding its first real home at Tryckolera in Lund.

Accordingly, we do not consider the product Isaac, and its technological environment, as a rehabilitation technological result as such. On the other hand, the changes experienced by the users of Isaac are examples of such results: Stig Nilsson has straightened his back. In his 40s. His co-worker, Thomas Gustafsson, of the same age, has experienced strong language development.

The fact that CERTEC focuses on the users and their self-image makes it relatively easy to avoid the trap of getting stuck in the type of research which concentrates on detail. Because a person is an in/dividual (not divisible). The difficulty lies in making visible changes in something which is complex, thereby making the results available outside the immediate user. Sometimes it may even be possible to arrive at what is general, common to all, by first focusing on the specific case, the particular.

Perhaps the main reason why it will be possible to communicate the Isaac project is that its technology, in forms different from the original one, will soon be available to many individuals. User results, mainly from Tryckolera in Lund, have produced The Pictorium and The Picturegraph ([4]). With these devices, it is now possible to combine one's own pictures to create picture messages, using Isaac's picture database (which can be used by other digital cameras as well), pictures with individual bar codes, and a bar code scanner.

Isaac's clock feature is another example. After having been developed further at Fågelskolan in Lund and Georgshill School in Hörby, it will now be made available to the public under the provisional name of Clock o'clock (5 ). Without user experience, involving one or a small number of special people, this would not have been possible. However, with this specific experience it is possible for the general to benefit from the particular.

Introduction

References