| Abstract: | While studies of office environments have treated the customisation of technology by users as a positive response to the situated nature of work, customisation of devices in the medical domain, and other safety-critical domains, when acknowledged, has been treated understandably as a violation and a threat to safety. This paper looks at the customisation of medical devices by nursing staff, based on an observational study carried out in three Scottish intensive care units. Drawing on the insights of ethnomethodology, this paper proposes an alternative approach to the study of user customisation and its organisation. An attempt has been made to go beyond the simple categorisation of types of customisation to explicate the detail of how customisation is carried out. Drawing on concerns in human-computer interaction and arguments in medicine surrounding the use of protocols, the potential for supporting customisation in the medical domain is discussed. |
