Graduate Tensions
G is an HCI graduate student in the U.S. working on designing mobile applications to help health workers in rural villages. Before setting off on her 3 month field trip, she spent weeks refining her IRB protocol and finally got approval to (1) ask a set of questions to both health workers and their female clients according to a meticulously prepared interview guide, (2) get usability feedback on some intial mobile protoypes.
In the field, when G employs her interview guide, she receives conflicting information. Health workers say they visit their clients regularly, whereas clients say they never see the health workers.
Clients say they take their medication whereas health workers complain that their clients do not. Doctors complain about the incompetence of rural health workers, and health workers complain about the apathetic doctors who train them. G does not know who to believe and realizes that understanding the complexity of the social dynamics in order to get these answers is as complicated as a Ph.D. in itself, and could take months to years.
Meanwhile, during conversations with her advisor back in the U.S., G is reminded that collecting responses to these interview questions is a crucial first step before beginning design, her actual goal. G feels restricted by the amount of time she has in the field, the need to submit a paper in three months, the Institutional Ethics Committee, and her own professional, financial and biological clocks telling her that she needs to graduate soon.
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