Senior Design Studio
3 Avenues of Interest
- Reducing anxiety and restlessness in waiting spaces
- Creating a space that builds trust overtime
- Helping to make “reaching out” feel a little more comfortable
How can we improve the waiting experience?
Waiting for good or bad news can be nerve-wracking already, but these spaces also need to accommodate for anxiety needs and fidget needs. These environments can be callous and insensitive, not taking these worries into account.
Developing a better system (against reliance)
Finding a balance between reaching out to help patients and giving them the ability to reach out to the professionals first. Being able to give them the option to do both would become advantageous into improving the overall culture of how we view disabled people — removing this “reliance” factor.
9.16 Guest Lecturer: Catherine Getchell
Catherine really emphasized talking one on one with people with disabilities themselves. She explained that trying to mimic the life in order to understand the circumstances in which people with disabilities face may help, it will never be a true experience, and it’s much better to get research through conversations and interviews. Reading research won’t suffice either. For our designs to be the best they can be, Catherine advises us to find people who are interested in our project and interview them as sources.
I really enjoyed the talk she gave as not only she gave insights into the experiences of someone who is blind very well by giving us a Zoom presentation of her keyboard reading an inaccessible PDF, but also she delved into the emotions + attitudes one felt. Our past few readings and lectures that we’ve done has given insight to this, but it was much more visceral hearing Catherine’s story when she went to her.
Another thing I learned that I didn’t realize I had assumed is that all people disabilities has a “person to take care of them”. Of course, this is incredibly dependent and no one should need to feel this way, but when I was doing some research on disabilities and healthcare, looking into caregivers and patients, I had subconsciously started seeing caregivers as a primary watchers over a person with a disability by default. Although I initially acknowledged that having this assumption takes away the power from the individual, it was something I had began to insert back into my perspective as I was doing research. Hearing Catherine talk about her experiences with her dentist was a great reminders into all the assumptions that abled-bodied people make around them, and how we, as designers, need to take careful thought into preventing this.
9.21 Guest Lecturer: Ashli Molinero
Today we had a guest lecturer, Ashli Molinero, the Director of Disabilities Resource Center for UPMC talk to us not only about this resource center available to UPMC, but also her own experiences as a person with disabilities. The story that stood out to me the most was her story when she was working at a previous job at an old apartment. Ashli asked where the bathroom was in this small apartment, and despite having a small wheelchair, it was still unable to fit through the bathroom. It was at this point the other employee she was with finally made the realization that the bathroom available in the space was inaccessible to her.
I think this is a common assumption that people have: separating people with disabilities from the wider audience. If I remember correctly, the room was to only be used by staff, rather than to the public. It was because the other employee didn’t consider that one of the staff members would be a wheelchair user themselves that she didn’t consider that the bathroom was inaccessible. This story was enlightening for me as well because I think I follow the same subconscious where I have designed previous spaces to be accessible because they were “public” and never thought about the staff working behind the scenes. This also discourages the notion of making designs accessible, because I should begin thinking of all parts of my designs to be accessible, rather than simply the commonly used spaces.
9.23 Guest Lecturer: Rachel Delphia
It was very interesting to see all the devices that have been created to improve an exhibition experience for those who have disabilities. I especially liked the Dot watch that could change to read Braille on the watch. Rachel talked about the nuances that abled bodied people have, such as being able to quickly scan a phone notification underneath the table and understand if it’s an important notification or not in a glance. Because people with low vision use text-reader accommodations, this wouldn’t be as easy, but with this Dot watch, because it was a smart device that can be connected to one’s phone, you could quickly brush your fingers over the watch subtly to check notifications. I really enjoyed hearing about this device because this is a rather subtle privilege that I believe most, like me, did not realized able-bodied people have. Yet, it’s something that I consider rather integral to my life, especially in the age of smart devices. It’s something I do quite often in just one day, so this elegant accommodation is very intriguing.
I also found it enlightening when Rachel touched upon the reasons why someone who can’t hear would want to go to a symposium, or why someone who can’t see would want to visit a museum. I think it’s a common question that people have (if back of the mind or not) but might not necessarily ask. Giving insight on to this cultural perspective was pretty important for me to understand and learn more about the feelings and emotions that someone with disabilities have. For example, Rachel brought up how part of the reason is simply due to social situations, where someone may just want to be able to visit the same places and experiences with their friends. I think overall, all of Rachel really helped with giving insight about how there are micro interactions that we have in our day that people with disabilities may not be able to experience in the same way, and the devices she introduced really helped with finding these accommodations, but it was important to find this perspective to design with to be able to find these solutions.
Peer Review
After some thought and talking to peers, I’m framing my project more centered around the mental health concerns for patients, specifically around anxiety and stress.
Prototyping and stakeholders
My stakeholders should focus more around the patients who experience strong anxiety, and how my project could center on alleviating it. I want to create a prototype that can consider this more thoroughly, and I’m thinking of heading into a physical prototype a user can interact with rather than purely visual.
Mid-semester reflection
For mid-semester, we had two presentations: one with our professors and the second a couple days later with our UPMC clients. For the first presentation, I had just finished an user interview with a physical rehabilitation doctor (though she focuses mainly on inpatients rather than outpatients) who informed me that typically for physical rehabilitation there isn’t much of a wait for your appointment. I included this point in my presentation with UPMC and they agreed, advising that maybe I should focus on BLV patients since their waiting times are generally significantly longer. In addition, the first presentation really helped prep me for the second one because I was able to figure out, based on feedback from my professors, which information was more interesting to focus on and which insights to bring up more. I had went overtime for the initial presentation, but for the second one, even in my first take, I was within the time frame, which showed that I was much more clear about what information was key to present.
Prototyping and conversations with user(s)/stakeholders
What are you doing? What are the challenges and how are you addressing them? Include photos where relevant.
10.26 The next 2 weeks
- Look into the Apple Watch Documentation.
- Find some tutorials on prototyping with the Apple Watch
- Interview a couple user research interviews focused on blind low vision.
- Look into an interview with a therapist.
Revised patient journey map
I zoomed in on the pre-appointment section, and removed the post-appointment from the patient journey map. Zooming in on where you’re going to make an impact. Update the Questions and Opportunities. Make a note of where you may be able to get answers to your questions.
Updated persona
10.28 Reflection
Doing pretty okay regarding research and schedule, falling a little behind regarding the prototype. Currently still looking into possible ways of prototyping, since using Apple Watches seems to be a little difficult. Back up plan is to prototype with an Arduino kit, though using it is very finicky so still trying to figure out alternatives. Planning on looking into iPhone haptics and and using this device as a prototype for simple haptics, so that in the case that this prototype wants to be pursued, this can be elevated towards any device.
Peer review reflection
From the peer review, a question many of my peers asked was how accurate would this system be? Where would the information come from? Especially considering that both the receptionist and the medical staff may not have their hands on this information — how can my design adjust for that? This helped me move forward in my prototyping process (thinking about how precise I want to be when I create my system).
11.16 Guest lecturer: Ena Kenny
Ena Kenny is an interior design lead at Stantec Architecture.
on the Global Health Sector Leadership team
I really enjoyed listening to her discuss acoustics within an environment, especially the technology integration aspects of it. It was really interesting learning about the different devices that already exist that are designed to help acoustics, such as the app BlindSquare. It’s similar to how we understand and know how to engage with GPS, but extends beyond usage in just a car. The Right Hear system was also fascinating, as it also helps wayfinding in a similar way. I think these devices that also integrate with our mobile technology really help bring more subtlety back for people who use them. I wonder how instead of using audio, how these devices can be even more subtle? Similar to the Dot watch mentioned in a previous lecture, I wonder if these devices can be “glimpsed” or “skimmed” so that the information can be retained more quickly for expert users.
11.18 Guest lecturer: Stephanie Gitto
Stephanie is a designer at LAB, and a presented a lecture that detailed the budgets and costs of the project. I think this is something that is especially important when working in client projects that, as students, we tend to ignore or suspend for the sake of learning in our project. I really appreciated how she detailed all of the expenses for us; I’ve found it very helpful in understanding the realistic scope of a project. I think the bit she stalked about knowing which parts is critical to mission / can keep the essence is something that is easy to hear, but can be difficult in practice, and especially difficult to work around with price constraints.
11.23 Guest lecturer: Mary Dietrich
Mary from Kolar design gave a lecture on branded environments. She talked about the complexity of designing within healthcare, which has been, of course, shown to us since starting this semester long project. There’s many considerations and layers that need to be considered. Looking into my own project, this reflects really strongly, and for the sake of my project, I think it’s important that I define exactly where my system should begin and end, otherwise there would be too many factors that can be out of scope and affect the success of a project.
Haptics
I started off with a low fidelity by prototype by tapping on a potential user and asking them if they can understand the number of taps and what it meant. I tried out several different ways of representing time. The first one I did was the same as what Apple watches does, tapping out the time by representing tens with long taps and ones with short taps.
I thought this might be too exact, as the doctors and receptionists may not have this information so I also approximated the time to 5, 10, 20, 45 minutes. I tried different ways of representing this with long and short taps as well.
Overall, the results from the usability test showed that giving exact minute intervals is too precise and therefore I moved on to approximated intervals such as “short”, “medium”, and “long” as these were more vague and didn’t require the user to count the number of taps.
I used Apple Developer and Xcode to prototype this. Their Core Haptics engine allows me to prototype several different types of haptic feedback, such as soft impact (light, very subtle) and a hard impact (strong, intense).
I used Xcode to create the prototype and tested out several different haptic feedbacks at the press of a button on the screen.
I asked my user to hold the phone while as I tapped out a series of different haptics to see how they felt. I then used this as feedback to create my prototype.
Sharpness: abstract representation of a haptic experience into the waveform that produces the corresponding physical sensations. Example: soft, rounded, or organic, or one that’s crisp, precise, or mechanical.
Intensity: strength of the haptic
Although this is a haptics CUI application for blind low vision patients, the audience I am presenting to are sighted and unable to test out the physical prototype (due to the nature of being online). Therefore, I also created a series of iterations of representing different vibration feedbacks.
11.30 Final Project plan
- Show case video of the prototype working
- Edit the video to show visuals when haptics are working
- Work on the “story” / visuals of showing the story
- Create storyboard of what the final video should look like
Reflection
In this semester, we focused on inclusive design and it was the first semester where we delved into service design. Inclusive design is an important factor to consider in any project we create, and I think it’s something I previously didn’t consider too heavily, or in the very least, did not consider as much. After working a semester long project in the area, including the case study projects we did initially as well as the many interviews and guest lectures I partook in, I believe that I can definitely take the insights I’ve learned into my future work.
I started off my project by focusing on physical rehab patients. A couple days prior to our mid-semester presentations, I had interviewed two doctors who told me the wait times for physical rehabilitation patients isn’t very long. This set me back momentarily, as it reduced the need of my design; my initial proposal for this new system were wrong. However, at the mid-semester presentation with UPMC, I received feedback that I should switch to focusing on BLV patients, as their wait times were significantly long. This also allowed me to focus on a more physical feedback prototype, which lead me into exploring haptics. Although some of my research needed to be adjusted
After the presentation, I found the feedback I had from Josiah really helpful. Regarding my presentation, he mentioned that my mockup should steer away from the Apple Watch design. Even though I had prototyped using one, because the design system I am proposing doesn’t require an Apple device and can be done with any haptic system, it’s better to use something less iconic, especially considering the reputation / resources that would come with being able to use an Apple watch.
I’ve always felt the research component in my designs is the most lacking out of all the entire design process. If I had to do it over again, I might put more into the research. I did a couple interviews with doctors and their experiences with the wait times, but mostly relied on secondary research / patient online reports for the patient’s experience. Furthermore, although somewhat out of scope of my prototype, doing more research on the overarching system from start to end of the appointment, not just focusing on the waiting period before an appointment, could help the foundation of my idea more. Research is an incredibly important aspect for design projects, and it’s especially true with the field we worked with. In one of our early guest lecture with Ashli Molinero, she told us that no replication of trying to step into our users shoes will be enough to replicate a disability someone experiences in their lifetime.
We’ve previously been taught concepts within universal design, but I think it was interesting and more insightful to focus learning on inclusive design this semester. Our projects focused more on how we can create a design that considers the specific factors of a group that keeps them excluded rather than creating a design that can fit for all (if not many people). By being more specific in the target demographic / group of people to focus on, I was able to create a design that succeed more in removing exclusivity, as it helped narrow the scope a lot. In the future, even if the field I work in isn’t related to healthcare or disabilities, I think that this mindset can be brought into any type of work I do and although it may prove to be difficult to execute successfully, bringing inclusive design into our work is an important component and the mindset that we’ve built from this semester is no doubt a great start.