Integrating The User Into The Formative Stages of Medical Device Usability Design: A Speculative and Collaborative Approach

OVERVIEW

This article discusses a PhD study based in a healthcare design lab at Monash University (Health Collab). The research interrogates how design methods can contribute to improving medical device usability, through a project re-designing cochlear implant (CI) systems, collaboratively with Cochlear Ltd. This practice is informed by existing usability design methods that are driven by human factors engineering and promoted by regulators. The research aims to augment these existing approaches with experience design methods, integrating the ‘contextual push’ of users alongside the ‘technology push’ of engineering driven development together into a framework for design.

Through the creation and discussion of speculative design probes, situated within co-design workshops, this framework provides a way to collaborate with medical device users. These methods explore enhancing the efficacy of these collaborations within the formative stages of development, providing opportunities to challenge the conceptualization of how entire devices and interfaces are used; rather than just changes to labels, packaging, and training.

Keywords:

• medical devices
• co-design
• speculative design probes
• formative development

Acknowledgements (including funding sources)

This research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship and the Cochlear Design Research PhD Scholarship. The author also wishes to acknowledge Cochlear’s contribution in coordinating research participants, the opportunities to work on the design of medical devices and their valuable input in informing the study. This project was supervised by Prof. Mark Armstrong, A/Prof. Arthur de Bono, Dr. Mark Richardson and Dr. Gene Bawden.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rowan Page

Rowan Page is a lecturer in Industrial Design at Monash University, Australia. Rowan’s PhD research explores how design research and practice can facilitate greater engagement with the recipients of medical devices during the formative stages of research and development. Additionally, Rowan has an interest in how design research, practice, and prototypes can aid in medical translational research. His research interests include co-design, speculative design, digital fabrication and the function of designed artefacts as boundary objects within collaborative and interdisciplinary design projects.