Use Phenomenologies. Observing the User While Taking Pharmaceutical Therapies

As introduced in Chap. 14, the notes below take the Farb Research (University Funds for Basic Research) Care for Care—Shaping medicines: a question of Identity, Use and Communication as their starting point. In the previous chapters, we have presented some points of view in which the discipline of design can contribute through a theoretical-critical analysis of the culture of medicine use. In this chapter, we present the outcomes of the observational activity. For three consecutive years, in addition to the research team, it involved classes from the Metadesign and Visual Elements Studios of the School of Design at Politecnico di Milano. Students were trained to detect the behaviour of patients—their grandparents— while dealing with drug therapy in their home contexts. These outcomes provided an initial basis for corroborating theoretical reflection and were supplemented by an analysis of the research group activities from a design perspective. A perspective that focuses on the formal aspects of objects, on the relationships established between subjects and objects—namely between patient and medicine—, and on the role that the context of use plays in shaping this relationship. The chapter reports reflections derived from observation activities.