[ Text Version of "Methodology" ]

Methodology

There are many ways of providing the field of rehabilitation technology with methods and a language which make it possible to connect and distinguish between its different branches. One connecting aspect is that it may be functional to question, at the very outset, whether the solution should imitate fully the solution for a non-handicapped person (the parrot method), have the same purpose but a different form (the chameleon method), or be completely different and only retain its fundamental feature, its very core (the poodle method).

1. The Parrot method

If it is possible to imitate, like a parrot, the way a non-handicapped person would handle a certain situation, this may be the best solution (at least from a social perspective). This means that the system consisting of the disabled person and her technology manages everything she would have been able to manage without technology and that she chooses exactly the same approach to problems which others around her handle without technological help. For example: glasses, prostheses, corrective medication, wheelchairs, etc.

This is the most common approach within rehabilitation engineering. It is good when it works, but much better solutions could have been achieved if, early on in the process, the researcher and the user together had asked themselves: Are we really right to try the parrot method? Wouldn't it be better to try the chameleon method? Or maybe even the poodle method?

2. The Chameleon method

In this method the user wants to manage exactly the same function as her non-handicapped friends, but she does not want to, or cannot, using her technology, solve the problem in the same manner. Like a chameleon she has to try to maintain her intention, but, in a figurative sense, change the color of the solution.

The act of mailing a letter is a good example. For Peter, for example, this poses so many problems that it is hardly meaningful to keep practising the function, developing tools for the function, etc. In this case, it is better to refrain from mailing letters (atoms) and just send the information (bits) instead. Change media, that is, and use electronic mail instead. This may also need to be supported by a customized user interface, that is, special handicap technology may be needed for handling the computer. But, if so, this has to be the real focus of rehabilitation engineering not trying to copy other people's old letter routines in a parrot-like manner.

Examples of other chameleon solutions, for example for people with visual impairments, include using Braille, speech synthesis or audio books instead of ordinary text (the purpose is the same as it is for sighted people: being able to take in something that has been documented). Guide dogs are another example (the purpose is the same as it is for sighted people: being able to move about on one's own).

3. The Poodle method

Like Goethe's metaphor in Faust, this is about getting to the heart of the matter. About finding the innermost part of the dream, the wish, the need. It might not be worth it to be able to make the exact original dream come true at any cost; the dream may in itself only be an example of something which it was important to make possible. Maybe it would be easier to get to the heart of the matter using a different approach?

Peter used to enjoy sailing very much. He still does, but now it is impossible. And, to him, an automatically operated sailboat which he could control simply by pushing two or three buttons would be meaningless. Because that was not what sailing was all about. That was not what his dream was about. To him, sailing was about a wish to challenge the sea and his own powers.

In this case, one has to look deeper. Was it a desire for challenge, intellectual or physical, which was the driving force? Would it be possible to find an activity which can be physically experienced just as much or more, which will make the body buzz with exhaustion and joy? Maybe there is an altogether different activity which could provide an intellectual challenge which would equal that of sailing? In that case, these are the activities which should be supported by rehabilitation engineering, not the original sailing activity.

As was pointed out earlier, one advantage of this type of structure is that it can bring out aspects which connect and distinguish between different types of rehabilitation technology. One distinguishing factor is that a physical disability which has been compensated for does not have to affect cognition at all, while visual and hearing impairments often lead to different ways of using sensory impressions and sometimes also to different cognition. A congenital neurological handicap or mental retardation, acquired brain damage or a mental illness can lead to very special ways of perceiving and interpreting the surrounding world, which the surrounding world may be unable to understand, empathize with or imagine.

It is possible to refer to the parrot, chameleon and poodle analysis at this distinguishing level too. One example is the prevailing view among neuro-typical people (an adjective I learned from a woman with autism) of interpreting neuro-atypical people (people with autism) as being non-empathetic. Maybe this is nothing but a parrot projection, a way of allowing oneself to see the actions of the neuro-atypical person as failed attempts at mimicking the neuro-typical person. Perhaps the heart of the matter is that the autistic person interprets the situation itself in a completely different way, but then acts logically (and empathetically) on the basis of this interpretation. Perhaps it is the neuro-typical person, who sees the situation only from his own point of view and measures the actions by his own yardstick, who is the least empathetic of the two?

Other methodological basics at CERTEC

1. Try to make visible the needs which people with disabilities themselves experience

In hindsight, knowing how many wrongs have been committed against people with disabilities because of superior attitude, erroneous theories or general lack of imagination, it ought to be easy to agree on the need for a great degree of humility in handicap research; to agree on using, as much possible and from the outset, the needs experienced by people with disabilities as the starting-point for the creation of a process where the needs gradually become more concrete. However, having access to needs experienced by individuals from the very start, is wishful thinking and hardly ever occurs in practice. For obvious reasons. For how is one to know what one wants before having any idea of what is possible?

It is not unusual for rehabilitation engineering projects to start out tentatively, on the basis of technological solutions to the hypothetical needs of a user. This opens up a dialogue with the aim of making visible the actual needs, and also includes developing and respecting the personal integrity and the self image of people.

2. Assume responsibility for reaching results and for ensuring changes are implemented

At CERTEC it is taken for granted that a researcher can and should do his part to ensure that results are reached and changes implemented, and that it is not just a matter of establishing facts. Outside the world of technology this may be viewed as unscientific and/or related to action research. But within technological research this attitude is natural.

3. Stick to the individual person in the situation

Knowledge about human dreams, wishes and needs are by nature concrete and context-dependent. If knowledge is deprived of this it becomes empty. This is why case studies take on such importance. However, in order for case studies to be successful it is necessary to work on one's ability to find good examples; “good" in the sense that they are able to bring out new knowledge which has previously been hidden. Once one has caught sight of this kind of new knowledge in a special case, one will find it in other contexts with remarkable frequency. See below under “Case Studies".

4. Make the most of the actual use of technology as a way of making the needs, wishes and dreams visible

CERTEC's method involves developing and using technology (old and new, preferably new) as a probe in order to understand human needs, wishes and dreams and to put them in motion. The result of this kind of approach can be the generation of, on the one hand, functional technological products as such, and on the other hand and maybe more importantly, a new way of making dreams, wishes and needs visible. The technological research process, whose premise it is that conditions must be made clear, makes visibility essential. Questions which have never been asked before have to be posed: do you mean this or that? In the gradual encounter with new technology, quite new sides to a personality may appear and expose themselves through obvious “a-ha" reactions. (See e.g.[8]).

5. Look for "technology-ness"

In Plato's time, the idea behind, for example, a horse, the actual “horse-ness", was considered more important than all living horses. (To Plato, the living horses were just bad reproductions of the idea).

One cannot help but be inspired by Plato's way of thinking and therefore, in our time, consider “technology-ness", the actual idea behind a certain use of technology, more important than the product itself. Because we know from the beginning that every new technological product will, by definition, (day by day, at shorter and shorter intervals) be superseded by a better one. Therefore, if a certain technology at a certain moment suits an individual well, it is important to find out from their interaction what the user found so special about the technology. This technology-ness can be brought into the next generation of technology, thereby eliminating the need, once again, to start from the beginning by analyzing needs, wishes, and dreams. The lifespan of a piece of knowledge about the needs of an individual or a group may be short, but compared to the life of a technological product it is almost eternal.

Introduction

References