Week 6: Consent by Kiosk
Routing consent, triage or payment for medical care through a touchscreen, and what that assumes about the person standing at it
29 March 2027 incentive
Outline
- the captive user at their most vulnerable: unwell, in pain, or supporting someone who is, with no realistic option to walk away
- what a check-in terminal assumes about literacy, language and composure — and what it costs a person who doesn’t match the assumption
- efficiency gains for the institution against the burden shifted onto the person least able to carry it
The argument
Every machine this course studies asks something of a captive user, but a hospital check-in kiosk asks it of someone who may be in pain, frightened, or speaking for a person who is. It assumes a level of literacy, language fluency and composure that is a reasonable average across all patients and a real failure for a specific one, at the exact moment that patient has the least capacity to push back or ask for help.
The efficiency the kiosk buys the institution — fewer staff at the desk, faster throughput — is real, but it’s paid for by whoever doesn’t match the assumed default, and that cost never shows up on any dashboard the hospital actually looks at. A form that’s merely inconvenient for most people can be genuinely unsafe for the person it wasn’t built with in mind.
Question to carry: if a kiosk were designed against the worst day someone could be having, rather than an average one, what would it ask first instead?
Teaching team
- Marisol Quaye — convenor