Womanspeak on the Mammography Machine….

Not many of you may have had the 'pleasure' of coming in contact with a mammography machine. It is one of the modern day necessities for a forty plus woman. And as a savior of many lives, it is a modern day marvel of medical science. The thought of being validated against the most dreaded disease in the world with clicks of a few photos is indeed a dream. So this article is in no way a critique of the performance of this machine nor the engineering feat it accomplishes.

Being a practitioner of human-product system designs however, I am a keen observer, thinker and visualizer of how such systems portray beyond their engineering function, the needs and expectations of the people who will use them. My mind therefore naturally veers to the other equally important and often neglected aspects of engineering and design: the psychological, the ergonomic and the emotional.

A first encounter with this potential life saver and its procedure maybe a bit of a jolt because breasts seem to be viewed by it as detachable discs. Vulnerable already in hospital garb and partially robed, this adds an element of indignity that an X-ray or MRI machine for example does not add. While as an engineer this may seem a perfectly logical representation, as a woman you experience a subhuman design realization of hanging by a short cantilever body part, restrained by a machine that assumes the part is unattached to the body. Much like a lamb I would imagine whose head is being positioned precisely for just the right cut.

While awaiting the endeavors of this life saving device as a designer and engineer, engineering drawing images like the above flash through your mind, not yet imagining however that they would be for real. Pinned down as a humble user though, you wonder whether they had taken into account how women felt while undergoing this experience.

Well known and well established tenets of Human Centred Design practiced regularly in our profession now resurface in your mind as you remain suspended by your breast: empathy, walk in the user's shoes, envision a day in the life etc. etc. And you think, the design of this marvel would surely have turned out different had it been viewed not just as an assembly of engineering parts working precisely and reliably together but as a human machine system in which the human, in this case the woman was also a part. Perhaps a more humane experience may have emerged with the user considered as lying down for example, resulting from and in a different design of this machine. The Human Centred Design approach after all works for engineering success as well as success for the people who use the products.

Once through with the procedure and your breasts are released from the clutches of the machine, you are able to take a human position again. You heave a sigh to know that you have perhaps been given yet another year's lease on life. And so, even though you have just experienced yet another unhappy adjustment as a user, not unlike the many you make every day with products and experiences designed without including the human component, you leave the pristine room after thanking your life saver and thinking, 'maybe in the next version of the design'. 

diagram 1 http://www.bchsys.org/bchserv/Imaging/Mammo

diagram 2 http://rpop.iaea.org/rpop/rpop/content/informationfor/healthprofessionals/1_radiology/mammography/mammography-technique.htm
cartoon Dr. Kathleen T. Ruddy's Breast Cancer Blog http://breastcancerbydrruddy.com/?p=2999