Menopause is a problem. Let's fix it. (they said)
Solution-first thinking limits how we understand problems. *This* is what we need to fix.
You’re reading DisAssemble, a biweeklyish philosophy of tech newsletter aimed at those interested in creating better digital products.
Oh this?
It's a wearable. For women with menopause. It came about via hackathon - the quintessential manifestation of solution-first thinking.
I spoke in my last newsletter about how technologists and those with the Silicon Valley Mindset tend to see problems/solution pairings everywhere due to how technology ‘enframes’ the world. Citing Heidegger, I noted that we are challenged to see the world as a series of problem/solution pairings due to digital technology’s mass applicability - the world is 'enframed' to be solvable through technology.
The way that menopause is enframed by this menopause hackathon - that is, the way it is revealed as a particular object of concern - is somewhat ugly. ‘Rational Thinking’, especially from the Enlightenment on, has framed the organic as the problem. The human, the animal and the plant are instrumentalised, objectified. This mindset has had an enormous consequences: from shunting oppressed women into hysteria wards, to breeding livestock into tortured, malformed beings, deterritorializing the organic and placing it on the workshop table to be ‘fixed’ has been devastating.
Clearly, very effective solutions to conditions that ail the organic can come from science and technology. Yet the hackathon model encourages ‘a move fast and break things’ mindset, with little to no research upfront.
But, ugly implications aside, is such an enframing effective method of solving problems? To find out we can examine how enframing puts up boundaries. That is, how it implicitly defines a problem in the world, a problem within a certain scope.
The creators of the menopausal device saw menopause enframed as a problem with a certain shape and boundary - we can call this the problem space. This scope limited what their solution could possibly be - it thus enframes a particular solution - we can call this the solution space.
In the case of the menopausal device, the problem space seems quite vague - itself an indicator that the device probably isn’t very useful or appropriate - but it seems to be:
no single tool exists to monitor menopausal symptoms, and
individual devices that measure hot flashes are expensive.
What constitutes the menopausal challenge is brought forth into the problem space, including certain elements while excluding others. Hackathons scope a problem space down, and designers in the hackathon further scope it down.
Within the corresponding solution space, the designers came up with a solution that is limited to a solitary device (and an app - but the details of it are extremely sparse) that seems to only detect hot flashes (wouldn’t women already know when they are having hot flashes?), measure sleeping disorders (which aren’t at all exclusive to menopausal women), and monitors heart rate irregularities (again not exclusive to menopausal women). Other indicators of menopausal symptoms do not seem to be included in the solution.
Nonetheless, education, health care provision, communication, other ailments, pre-existing devices or any number of areas that might be included in the problem space are excluded (the page about the device indicates that the device would connect women to specialists but there is no indication of how this would work).
Again, once the scope of a problem has been defined, it limits the scope of potential solutions. Thus only particular solutions are revealed (enframed).
Robust understandings and educational initiatives of women's health? Greater access to clinicians qualified in menopause? Investigating existing devices? The need for a device to measure hot flashes?
None of these solutions are amenable to a the problem space of : ‘a single device that measures menopausal symptoms doesn’t exist and existing ones are expensive’. When we declare the problem space as existing in and around diagnostic devices, in and around measurement and diagnosis, the solutions that are enframed simply becomes those that satisfy these problems: diagnostic technology.
In addition to the challenges around scoping, the enframing of a problem also presupposes that the problem will be solvable. Design theorists have long dwelled on the nature of design ‘solving’ - many feel that designers can't really solve problems - at least not like an engineer could solve a structural problem in a bridge.
Unlike engineering problems, most human problems are unbounded (arguably engineering problems are as well). Design theorists Horst Rittel and Martin Webber defined these as 'wicked problems', which are problems that are unique and ill-defined. In wicked problems, “there are no ends to the causal chains that link interacting open systems”. 'Solving' wicked problems can even cause other problems.
Addressing menopause with a device on your wrist may simply cause other problems. Data could be used by nefarious or at least unknown parties. Women may be uncomfortable explaining why they have this (over-designed) device on their wrist. The device may create all sorts of false positives, especially given the nuance of the individual. Women may not want to use a device, or not trust its recommendations, or find that the recommendations aren’t reliable.
So how do you ‘solve’ problems with research and design in ways that don’t cause more problems or that don’t address the wrong aspects?
The first and most important way to avoid these outcomes is to understand the actors (person, organisation, etc) involved not as automatons but as complex entities.
That is, don't consider each actor in a problem space as instrumental (what Heidegger would call ‘bestand’), with a linear single dimension of causality. The assumption that creating a device to 'fix' menopause presupposes that people will readily, knowingly and effectively adopt the device, as though they were another gear in the solution machine.
The complexity and messiness of humans accords poorly with the binary on/off complexity of machines. People undertake actions due to any number of volitional or exerting factors.
In this way, actors have to be understood on their own terms, with their own idiosyncrasies. In a previous newsletter I discussed just this, observing something within its own context and submerging yourself in how it understands.
To do this you need to build structures to help facilitate an understanding of entities ‘on their own terms’. We can use the concept of hermeneutics to help us build these structures. Hermeneutics (in this context) is about understanding how people or entities (e.g. organisations) interpret and make sense of their surroundings. This newly acquired interpretation can them be used to interpret experiences of this actor - that is to say, from their point of view. Shared understandings results, which highlights hard-to-discover presuppositions and implicit knowledge. This is known as the hermeneutic circle.
Hermeneutic circles help to map out the vocabulary and experiences of a particular actor, but importantly it also aids in sensemaking of their experience. This is different from traditional research methods, which focus primarily on what people experience rather than how. The hermeneutic circle aims to take subject’s perspective on their surroundings, rather than the researcher’s. In this way it is much about subject-oriented rather than object-oriented.
Think of it like building a frame - research needs to be completed to build up the implicit knowledge and experience of an actor so that the picture can be seen from their particular perspective. Often this requires viewing actors in action - via such activities as observations and contextual interviews.
This is described well by A. Wilson:
“The language of experience is not a neutral medium that simply mirrors ‘what happened’ or allows unfettered access to the contents of people’s minds . Rather, participation in interviews is a social performance by interviewer and interviewee that involves specific ways of talking about experience; this requires careful consideration during interpretation.”
Returning to our challenge of incorrectly scoping a problem: the hermeneutic circle addresses this as it doesn’t treat actors as simple cogs in a wheel. It centres the experiences of actors, seeing casual relationships stretching out from the lived experience of the primary actors. In this way the scope is set from the point of view of the actors, rather than the designer. It also can help predict externalities - whether a solution might cause more problems - by shedding light on how a particular experience might play out.
In our example, understanding how a woman understands what menopause is, how they feel about their own circumstances, or interpret other actors involved in their world would help to complete the hermeneutic circle. This would allow us to see the problem solution scope differently - we could view it as a challenge related to education, culture or begin to understand different implications or conditions associated with menopause. The scope is defined around the actor, and we begin to understand how they perceive their challenges and areas of concern.
Still, a solution would need to be designed. How do we follow through to ensure that solutions follow on from this approach? More on that next time.
Stay well.