Maternal Machines: Imagining Experiences in Perinatal Care

Perinatal care is a term that broadly refers to the period of time from pregnancy up to a year after giving birth. Imaginaries, fictional scenarios, patents and actual designs to support affected stakeholders during this period reflect how this topic has for a long time fed into society's dreams, fears and desires about care. Smart monitors of infants’ sleep, respiration, heart rate or temperature, cots with facial recognition, swing chairs that are ‘Alexa compatible’, chatbots for postpartum depression, ‘maternal’ Alexas or nanny robots are examples of the potentials that this topic offers for imagining scenarios for care and wellbeing. Often rich with insights about societal dreams, fears and desires about what we would like technologies to do for us, imagined scenarios can also indicate ways in which we regard those already engaged in roles of care, echoing cultural and gendered tropes. As AI and related technologies increasingly become entangled in situations of care, the imagined possibilities in contexts of such complex, sensitive and emotionally charged spaces are worth examining, whilst interrogating how HCI technologies in perinatal care could expand beyond quantifiable data and tap into sensorial, non-numerical forms of knowledge.

In this workshop, we will look at ideated scenarios with technologies related to maternal and infant care in contemporary, historical and cultural contexts including those from Japan, and we will create our own imagined scenarios of care. Through a mixture of activities that include presentations, drawing, hands-on interactions and group conversations we will discuss opportunities and implications in the design of technologies for maternal/parental and infant care around the perinatal period. Our imagined scenarios will explore in particular two interrelated themes in the research: non-numerical forms of knowledge and touch.