My role
Area of focus
Team members
Design Researcher
Facilitator
Inclusive Design
Futures studies
Cognitive Semiotics
Co-design
Felipe Sarmiento Pardo
Daniel Ura
Research question: What are the characteristics of the Operating Room in 2042?
The project.
Cognitive semiotics is an emerging research and practice area at the intersection of the biological, cognitive, and behavioral sciences on the one hand, and the study of meaning (traditionally the domain of the arts, philosophy, linguistics, and semiotics) on the other.
As part of our Cognitive Semiotics class, we worked with a surgical team from St. Michael's Hospital to envision the future operating room. The operating room was framed as a semiotic environment that relies on distributed cognitive processes.
The method.
We applied a futures method called the Three Horizons Framework to help St. Michael's Hospital structure their thinking about the future in the face of uncertainty in ways that sparked innovation. This framework describes three ways of doing things and how their relative prevalence and interactions evolve over time. This method helps to gather intelligence about the future.
How it works.
Horizon 1 represents the world as it exists today. It is the "status quo" or "business-as-usual" of innovation to which people are currently responding. Horizon 1 will eventually wane in popularity and relevance. Horizon 3 is our "vision of the future". We may not be able to define this future in every detail — as the future is always uncertain — yet we can intuit what fundamental transformations lie ahead, and we can pay attention to social, ecological, economic, cultural and technological experiments around us that may be pockets of this future in the present. Horizon 2 represents the ‘world in transition’ — the entrepreneurial and culturally creative space of already feasible innovations that can disrupt and transform Horizon 1 to varying degrees and make way for Horizon 3.
All three horizons exist at the same time with varying degrees of prevalence. There are "pockets of the future" in the present. This helps to pluralize the future so we can speak of futures. This allowed the hospital to strategically envision alternative futures in times of increasingly turbulence and uncertainty.
Data collection.
We had doctors and surgeons from the hospital map out their three horizons from 2017 (Horizon 1) to 2042 (Horizon 3). We took a systems approach to the workshop by not limiting ourselves to the layout of the operating room. Through proper facilitation, we explored others factors that might influence the operating room in the future such as the design and efficiency of the rest of the hospital, the healthcare landscape, the hospital's organizational culture, and the effects of the legacy of innovation to that culture.
Deliverable.
Once all innovations were grouped into their appropriate horizon, we then determined their prevalence, or place along the horizon, so we could understand which innovations could lead to the next horizon.
We examined a few innovations from Horizon 3 and asked how they might manifest. We ultimately iterated upon the patient specific simulation innovation with elements of telesurgery and free flow of data. The result was an operating table that used holograms to project a patient's body and vitals. Surgeons could use this technology to train and practice surgery operations.
We crafted a short video presentation to communicate how this future might look. The scenario, or context, of this presentation was that of a private company pitching their new product to St. Michael's Hospital. Named OB-1, a nod to Star Wars, it was a great example of how science fiction and imagination can help shape our futures.
