Objective: The objective of the current study was to develop and evaluate a persuasive decision-support aiming at reducing pre hospital delay and increasing ambulance service use for patients who suffer from a recurrent myocardial infarction. Materials and methods: The system was developed as a prototype mobile application for smartphones. The system was evaluated by four end-users with previous experience of myocardial infarction. The user tests were complemented with cognitive walkthroughs and heuristic evaluation. Results: A total of 14 persuasive design principles were used to guide the design of the system. The usability was regarded as high with an average score of 82 on the System Usability Scale. The users reported that they found the system highly persuasive. Conclusions: User-centered design together with persuasive design principles through iterative testing and development has resulted in a prototype app with potential to improve patients care seeking behavior. The content in the prototype will be further evaluated before it is integrated in educational interventions.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze and discuss experiences, in terms of challenges and opportunities, of teacher-researchers who engage in research on the learning study approach. The following two questions will be addressed: how can the teaching experience influence, and become an asset, in the research process and what challenges do teachers face when they enter the research practice?

Design/methodology/approach

Each question will be explored through some empirically grounded themes. The analysis is based on experiences from participation in a PhD program, where learning study was used as a method and variation theory was the main theoretical framework. One learning study was focusing on creative writing in primary school and the other was focusing on historical primary source analysis in upper secondary school.

Findings

The first question is addressed through the following themes: choosing and identifying research problems; planning and conducting research lessons; analyzing research lessons and students’ learning; and process of self-reflection, and the second question through: teaching as an object of research; to use and develop theories; and communication and review in research. The findings indicate that learning study is a practice-based research approach where teaching experience and academic skills are intertwined in many ways. Both approaches bring opportunities as well as challenges.

Originality/value

The paper is expected to contribute insights and knowledge about the advantages, as well as hindrances to overcome, for teacher-researchers who use learning study as a research method. The results can also be related to the performing of action research in teachers’ classroom practice.

Electrical interfaces between biological cells and man-made electrical devices exist in many forms, but it remains a challenge to bridge the different mechanical and chemical environments of electronic conductors (metals, semiconductors) and biosystems. Here we demonstrate soft electrical interfaces, by integrating the metallic polymer PEDOT-S into lipid membranes. By preparing complexes between alkyl-ammonium salts and PEDOT-S we were able to integrate PEDOT-S into both liposomes and in lipid bilayers on solid surfaces. This is a step towards efficient electronic conduction within lipid membranes. We also demonstrate that the PEDOT-S@alkyl-ammonium: lipid hybrid structures created in this work affect ion channels in the membrane of Xenopus oocytes, which shows the possibility to access and control cell membrane structures with conductive polyelectrolytes.