Usability as an Interactional Resource: Deictic Management of Scene Formulation

Abstract

In this paper, we describe how embodied action, in the form of pointing and other gestures, and personal and spatial indexicals are used to constitute participation frameworks and work sites in an instructional surgery. As a site for both learning and work, the operating room afforded us the opportunity to examine how usability, which is a critical design consideration, can be used as a resource for learning in interaction. In our detailed analysis of the interaction among participants (both co-present and projected) we sought to describe a particular case of how usability was achieved as a relevant consideration for surgical education in the operating room. In doing so, we demonstrate a set of members' methods by which actors establish and provide for the relevance of the projected needs of projected users as part of developing an understanding of their current activity.