DHIS2 Design Lab
The DHIS2 Design Lab explores how we can support and promote design and innovation within the DHIS2 software ecosystem. The knowledge generated through our work is also relevant to research on design, innovation, and digitalization more generally.
About the lab
DHIS2 is a global generic software platform used by many organizations in different health and non-health contexts across more than 70 countries. What's considered usable and relevant to the many end-users across different implementations of the software tends to vary, thus it's challenging to build a ‘one size fits all’ solution on the generic level of design. The design lab sees DHIS2 and the surrounding resources, people, and practices as a design infrastructure, rather than a standard software solution. The aim of the design infrastructure is to support the design of usable and relevant systems during implementation into concrete user organizations.
Our main focus is on strengthening the implementation-level design and innovation capacity of the design infrastructure so that it better supports designers in locally building the software that is right for particular contexts of use.
The design lab consists of researchers and post-graduate students at the Department of Informatics at the University of Oslo, working in collaboration with DHIS2 core developers and implementation specialists around the world including India, Mozambique, Malawi, and Tanzania.
Main areas of focus
Exploring sociotechnical approaches to design and innovation
Exploring how we can configure projects for sociotechnical design, innovation, and digitalization
Exploring how IT professionals such as the HISP groups can move from technical consultants to "digitalization partners"
Exploring how the DHIS2 core design and development team can strengthen their requirements gathering processes
