Color and Meaning: Designing a wristband is harder than you think
After reading Jonathan’s post I came across this New York Times article about a national effort to standardize the color coding system for hospital wristbands and the challenges that presents.
I enjoyed it as a concrete example of much of what we have been talking about these last few classes, and it showed how intertwined systems of categorization are with social context. It did a good job laying out the unexpected meanings, values and assumptions that can effect what might seem to be a fairly straightforward task.
Questions of privacy, granularity of information systems, and the historical nature of how we understand colors (at least in this culture) are all raised here.
Shawna Hein Said,
September 25, 2008 @ 11:41 am
this is a really interesting article, noah, nice find!… one of the things that’s interesting is that people have been using colored bracelets for years, but it’s only when some folks decided to implement a national standardization that people are starting to talk about whether or not the colors people have been using are the “right” colors. One of the great things about standardization, is even if it ends up not working because no one can agree on one set of standards (which happens often), at least it still makes people step back and think about the methods & systems they’re using, compare them to others, and see if they make sense or are the best way of doing things.
Steve Said,
September 26, 2008 @ 9:59 am
I noticced that all of the hospital and professional organizations are trying to stardardized hospital wristbands. One effort is to allow one to custom imprint it. But using one color is straightforward for each:
See http://www.wristbandfactory.com/hospitalswristbands.html and also http://store.rippedsheets.com. There is purple for Do No Resuscitate” Wristbands, Yellow for “Tendency to Fall” Wristband, Red for “Extreme Allergy” Wristband, Pink for “Do Not Use Limb ” Wristband and Green for WB10056 “Blood Product ” Wristband. All of them can be custom imprinted. All states are heading toward some common ground.