Spearhead-MAKEAWARE!: A Design Research Framework to Tackle Antibiotic Consumption and Resistance Through Creative Approaches of Data Co-Creation

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health crisis. It renders antibiotics less effective, making infections harder to treat. AMR crisis is connected to antibiotics stewardship: the scarcity of antibiotics is resulting from insufficient investment in new research, combined with their misuse and overuse across various sectors. Systemic approaches to AMR crisis put human consumption and, therefore, human behaviours in the centre of AMR research. People engagement is considered fundamental to complement the quality data gap on antibiotic consumption as well as general symptoms. This chapter introduces a design research project devoted to experimenting and validating methods and tools for fostering a citizen data co-creation approach on AMR and antibiotic consumption with the goal of raising awareness and activating behaviour change and filling the gap in data sources for supporting people-led innovation and research. The proposed methods are based on a series of experimental workshop format based on the interaction with microbiology experts as well as artists and designers and the prototyping of web interfaces for supporting a data collection based on interactive maps and digital narrations.