Designing with the customer or patient in mind should be the design process of the future.

By Kim Ukura, Associate Editor, PD&D

Last October I sprained my ankle playing indoor soccer. It was a stupid mistake – stepping on a teammate’s foot and falling badly – as well as my first serious injury in my new hometown of Madison, WI.

After limping slowly around for a couple of days without much improvement, I reluctantly sorted through my insurance paperwork to find a physician and booked an appointment at a local clinic.

I distinctly remember how disoriented I was by the entire experience. First, the parking lot confused me, and I parked at the wrong end of the hospital, meaning I had to walk the longest possible distance to reach my appointment. When I finally made it into the exam room, the doctor gave me a quick once-over and declared it a “standard sprain” but suggested an MRI just to be sure.

When I asked how to navigate to that wing of the hospital, a busy nurse pointed down a long hallway without a second glance. I had to walk all the way back to the opposite end of the clinic, on a badly-sprained ankle, to have the second test done! As I shuffled away, no one bothered to ask if I wanted a wheelchair or some assistance. I was frustrated, hurt, and deeply annoyed.

Medical design – whether we’re talking about the places patients visit or the devices doctors use – can be a tricky business. When designing a product that is used by a variety of people, each with different interests, what considerations do medical design engineers make?

I got thinking about these issues once again after I came across a video created by Worrell, an industrial design firm in Minnesota. In the video, titled “Design We Can All Live With,” Worrell brought together a patient and a physician to discuss the information imbalance in the patient and physician relationship and what their firm could do to help.

The video debuted back in September 2010, but it came to my attention after reading an article by the line, an online magazine highlighting the “new economy in the Twin Cities.” The article discussed Worrell’s approach to human-centric medical design; the company contends that “focusing on the human experience leads to breakthrough products.”

As the article points out:

Anyone who’s ever had to navigate a confusing hospital complex or request health records from a provider has probably reached this conclusion at some point: our health care system wasn’t designed for patients.

And generally, they’re right. Health care design has tended to revolve around the concerns of physicians, insurers, and attorneys, but arguably the most important stakeholders, patients, have largely been left out of the process.

Obviously, Worrell isn’t the only company using a new design rubric in their product development process. Last year I wrote a story featuring a product design firm, Product Development Technologies, that highlighted a research-driven processes whereby the company uses ethnographic techniques to learn what consumer needs are before designers even pick up a pencil to start designing.

These two techniques, although they used different terms, have a lot in common. Both start from the premise that the consumer should have a say in how a product works. Both admit that product designers don’t always know best. And both can be extremely involved processes that might delay time-to-market for important products.

Even so, designing with the customer or patient in-mind seems like it should be the design process of the future. Now that customers can go online to research their options, make intelligent comparisons, and invest in the devices they feel most comfortable with, their needs are at the forefront – whether design engineers like it or not.

The challenge going forward will be to continue to innovate while meeting the demands of all stakeholders in the product design process.

How often do patient or customer concerns come up during your product design process? Should engineers be incorporating this feedback into new products, or continuing to do what they think is best? Email your thoughts to kim.ukura@advantagemedia.com.