Have You Considered the Potential of Deep Design?

How much time do medical product designers spend on understanding clinical processes? Perhaps not enough. Product designers “often don’t see their devices as part of a system,” says Kathleen Harder, PhD, director of the Center for Design in Health at the University of Minnesota. But there can be adverse ripple effects with devices, she warns. Harder also serves as director of graduate studies in the Human Factors Program at University of Minnesota. For more than 15 years, she has worked with clinicians to test ideas that guide users toward desired behaviors in healthcare delivery. With a background as an experimental psychologist, she has studied ways to shape human behavior in order to achieve the desired outcome. At the upcoming MD&M Minneapolis conference on November 9, Harder will share those insights with medical product designers and engineers in “Deep Design: Using Technology to Improve Clinical Work Processes.” To help product engineers understand what’s needed for “deep design,” (i.e., human-centered design at a very granular level), Harder encourages medical device companies “to send their engineers out into the field before they start developing a product so they can see what is needed. They can then get the lay of the land and the complete context” of how their products will be used. “Nothing happens in a vacuum,” she adds. “A device needs to enhance, not hinder a system,” continues Harder.  “Even though we can’t control all t...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Authors: Tags: R & D Source Type: news