ISRC Speaker Series Presents: Dr. Aisling O'Kane

Adults with Type 1 Diabetes have choices regarding the technology they use to self-manage their chronic condition. They can use glucose meters, insulin pumps, smartphone apps, and other technologies to support their everyday care. However, little is known about how their everyday lives might influence what they adopt or how they use these mobile medical technologies. A multi-method study was conducted to examine contextual factors that influence their technology use. While individual differences play a large role in everyday use, social, physical and cultural factors were also found to influence use. This talk outlines these findings, and also shows how situated qualitative methods were used beyond mobile medical devices to examine personal fitness technologies “in the wild” and concludes on how individual differences are driving DIY health and wellbeing practices.

Aisling Ann O’Kane is an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University College London Interaction Centre and a human factors engineer originally from Toronto, Canada. She’s interested in the impact of situated user experience on the “in the wild” adoption, use, misuse, and DIY practices surrounding personal medical, health and wellbeing technologies, a space between human factors engineering and human-computer interaction. She has worked in industry and in various labs in Europe and North America, including Georgia Tech as a Ubicomp visiting researcher, Mobile Life as a masters student in Stockholm, and Microsoft Research Cambridge as an intern.