Week 2: Commencement of Research

It’s been a chaotic week, but it has been a fun one! Working with Dr. James Clawson and PhD student Arash has been a rewarding experience thus far. I have successfully learned most of the nomenclature associated with pregnant mothers and midwives. It was refreshing to have Memorial day off, but now it’s time to get down to business.

I spent the earlier sections of the week researching and reading a plethora of papers to develop a fundamental comprehension for midwife practices and to amass a solid base for our related works section. Related works will note any other similar studies that have been conducted and if those studies have been effective and how they relate to our project. I was gaining traction and picking up speed, but then Dr. Clawson made an executive decision to move our project in a different direction. Instead of designing an application designed for data communication between midwives and doctors in the event of hospitalization, we would instead be developing an application that could be used by all pregnant mothers in order to facilitate motherhood. We would be tracking microtasks, in our study to ensure the mother could effortlessly used the application and would be satisfied with the interface. I was a bit shocked to have a substantial change in project direction, but I was glad that it still related to our original project and my days research could be preserved and used.

I continued to work throughout the week and began inserting my references, related works, and methods into ShareLatex to generate an outline of the three aforementioned sections. It was a bit difficult writing code to place into a PDF, but Sheraya and I were able to catch on. I must say it looks quite professional and worthy of an academic paper, even if it is an outline. Our methods are tentative as we are still unclear about our permanent project direction. Thursday I had an excellent meeting with Arash about mobile application development. We decided that we would integrate social media platforms into our own application as opposed to attempting to synthesize an entirely new platform for pregnant mothers. Arash’s philosophy on this came from the fact that no one liked to create two profiles and share tediously on multiple accounts, so we would integrate popular platforms to retain attention and user interaction. We also decided the app must have logging, tracking, peer to peer communication, and professional help search. I am eagerly anticipating the software development portion of this project.

I have learned a great deal about motherhood and perinatal issues that constitute it. Mothers depend on technology as a resource for immediate, regular, and detailed information. They fear isolation, so in order to eliminate it they enjoy reading blogs detailing events that are similar to ones they have experienced. A regular flow of information about mother groups and playdates is a useful item mothers utilize. Prenatal mothers fear negative perceptions of themselves, so they will consult search engines to either confirm their solutions to natal issues or to discover the solution to an issue foreign to them. They are afraid of being seen as a “bad mother” when they consult their peers about trivial remedies, thus paving the way for technological consulting. Constituents of focus groups often cite Google and Facebook as their primary sociotechnical consultant. I cannot wait to use the information I have gathered and integrate it into a mobile application.

The weekend is nearly here and I could not be happier with my current situation. I plan to peruse the farmers market and read a few more research papers about technological intervention in motherhood. Perhaps some rest may be in order.