Research
These case studies demonstrate Cara’s work applied in real-world research engagements.
Image courtesy https://ahfp.monash/
Artificial Heart Frontiers Program
Transforming the future for patients with heart failure.
🡪 https://ahfp.monash/
Professor Cara Wrigley is one of nine Chief Investigators in the Artificial Heart Frontiers Program (AHFP), being responsible for leading the human factors and design usability studies from her design lab at The University of Queensland. The AHFP presents a powerful, exciting opportunity from which to deliver urgently needed solutions, focussed on the application of mechanical circulatory support (MCS) devices, for people suffering from untreatable forms of advanced heart failure. It is a multidisciplinary consortium that applies cutting-edge technologies to transform the healthcare of people with heart failure.
Calling on her expertise in encompassing human factors, design usability, patient quality of life, and the design of digital channels supporting MCS devices, Cara aims to enhance the usability and effectiveness of artificial heart technologies, ensuring that they meet the needs of patients and improve their overall quality of life.
For more information about the project and its impact, visit https://ahfp.monash/.
Defence by Design
🡪 defencebydesign.com
During her time at the University of Sydney Professor Wrigley established the Defence by Design Group, where she ran applied research projects in the military domain. This collaboration contributed to the theoretical development of ‘military design thinking’ that has been taught and applied widely throughout the Australian Defence Force. In 2018, she also established and directed the Design Innovation Research Group, leading a research team that focused on design-led exploratory research, conducting applied and theoretical research into people, emotions, strategy and business.
Developed by Professor Cara Wrigley and derived from extensive research within the industry, Defence by Design provides a new approach to design thinking in the military context. Wrigley identifies six key phases of design thinking; Scout, Empathise, Interrogate, Design, Experiment and Deploy, each phase cyclic and interchangeable through the process. A set of tools were developed from this method, to help anyone tap into their inner military design thinker.
Mapping Interdisciplinary Expertise
🡪 interdisciplinaryexpertise.org
Complex real-world problems do not align neatly with academic disciplines. Many advances in knowledge production and application depend on high-trust interdisciplinary collaborations requiring sustained interactions between academic researchers and the many other people and organisations involved in designing, making and testing systems, services and products. This requires people skilled in working across diverse knowledge boundaries, using new combinations of disciplinary, interdisciplinary and local knowledge. Working across disciplinary boundaries is very challenging, requiring capabilities that are often ill-defined and learnt by trial and error. Lack of a principled knowledge-base for developing interdisciplinary expertise creates severe challenges for research and innovation teams and limits progress on ‘wicked problems’. This raises three key questions:
What exactly constitutes the expertise needed to work across disciplinary boundaries?
How do researchers and university students learn to work across disciplinary boundaries and develop this expertise?
How can the development of interdisciplinary expertise be better supported in research teams and university courses?
This project addresses these questions in the context of researching and learning in Multidisciplinary Research Centres.