mohe: mobile health for moms, kids, adults and elderly

7/28/2019 MOHE: Mobile Health for moms, kids, adults and elderly

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MOHE: Mobile Health for moms, kids, adults and elderly

P. Arslan1, H. Nam1, M. Romero1, P. Perego1, F. Costa1, G. Andreoni1 and S. Muschiato11 Dept. of INDACO Politecnico di Milano, Via Durando 38/a, 20258 Milano Italy

Abstract. The following paper presents a creative process

aimed at developing innovative scenarios for mobile health.The entire research MOHE is summarised, but the paper isfocused on a creative workshop performed in order to arrive,

from a complete research, to four movies of 2 minutes each.

20 participants, divided in 4 groups, where involved in 2days intensive-work that has produced 4 storyboards ofscenarios. Each group, composed by designers andbioengineers have been collaboration of medical specialists.

Each group has focused their attention on a user-target

(moms, kids, adults and elderly) in order to create newconcepts for everyday healthcare services through mobiletechnology.

Keywords: Mobile Technology, Healthcare, DigitalServices, Creative Process, Personas, Scenario , Storyboards,

Moodboard

1 Introduction

Innovative medical technologies offer a range of

solutions to address the early detection and diagnosis

and the efficient treatment of many diseases. Today,

almost all widespread chronic illnesses can be treated

successfully if detected and diagnosed early enough.

Modern health Information and Communication

Technology increases the accessibility of individualcitizen-patient information and supports clinical

decision-making.

Medical devices are a diverse group of products

that ranges from simple items such as sticking plastersto complex devices such as heart by-pass machines

(Martin 2008) According with the European Medical

Device Directive (93/42/EEC): Any instrument,

apparatus, appliance, material or other article, whether

used alone or in combination, including the software

necessary for its proper application intended by the

manufacturer to be used for human beings for the

purpose of:

diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, treatment oralleviation of disease,

diagnosis, monitoring, treatment, alleviationfor or compensation for an injury or handicap,

investigation, replacement or modification ofthe anatomy or of a physiological process

control of conception and which does notachieve its principal intended action in or onthe human body by pharmacological,

immunological or metabolic means,

but which may be assisted in its function bysuch means.

2 Aims and objectives

MOHE, Mobile Health for moms, kids, adults and

elderly, is a project aim to develop new scenarios of

use of medical devices, based on mobile phone

technologies. The project is focused on 4 specifictarget groups; pregnant women, kids, adults and

elderly.

The aim of this paper is evaluate the effectivenessof the methods applied in the creative phase and their

impact on the resulting concept designs.

3 Methodology

The project is structured in three steps:

Research on future product-service systems foreHealth, the market of mobile healthcare

products, existing technologies suitable to be

applied in mobile phones and users needs.

Co-design workshop involving designers,bioengineers and healthcare specialists.

Video scenarios production.The different design tools have been used in the co-

design workshop to stimulate collective creativity

(Leonard Burton and Swap 1999) for the generation

process of new scenarios.


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The overall research and the development process

is shown in the Fig 1.


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Fig.1 Complete research process diagram

In the initial brief the target user groups were defined

as:

Moms/dadies and babies Kids Healthy adults The elderly

The research phase, conducted through the review of

literature, surveys and previous researches (including

questionnaires, interviews and observation) permitted

to focus the project more precisely considering

unsatisfied needs and potential market niches. The

target user groups were consequently specified as:

Pregnant woman with kid with focus onpsychological support

Preadolescent with focus on autonomy gainingin everyday life and chronic disease long term

management

The elderly over 75 with focus on technologytradeoff and memory sustain for example for

correct medication assumption

Healthy adult with focus on overall wellbeingand family dimension

We have chosen Scenarios (Carroll 2002) to develop

the co-design phase considering that it is an

appropriate method for designing services. In fact,

scenario-based design focuses on the description of theusers and how the users perform the tasks in order to

extract users demands; and provides a tool to designproducts with high usability. This design approach

helps developing ideas that involve interactions with

multiple users over a period of time and is very useful

when a service with a defined goal has to be achieved.

Different scenario formats have been used in the

development process according to the actors concernedin the different phases: a narrative format at the

beginning to facilitate the communication with the real

users, storyboards in the workshop phase and movies

as final output suitable for company and public

communication. The different scenario formats arebased on:

Personas (Pruitt and Adlin, 2006) are fictitious

characters created to represent the different user types

which are useful as a design tool in considering the

goals, behaviours, desires of a group of real users.

According to Pruitt and Adlin the use of personasoffers several benefits in product development. They

are synthesized from data collected from interviews in

order to help to guide decisions about a product, such

as features, interactions, and visual design. Such


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inference may assist with brainstorming, use case

specification, and features definition.

Moodboard is a type of poster design, collage of

materials that consists of images, text (quotes,keywords), colours, textures, materials and samples of

objects in a composition to get a visual stimuli and

inspiration in order to develop their design concepts, to

get a picture of what they want to accomplish and to

communicate to other members of the design team.

The mood board may be used as a frame of referenceduring the design process in a variety of abstract

disciplines, as advertising, fashion design or trends

research but we dont find references about

applications in health care design field.

Storyboard (Vertelney and Curtis, 1990): is a tool

derived from the cinematographic tradition; it is the

representation of use cases through a series of

drawings or pictures, put together in a narrative

sequence.

3.1 MOHE Workshop

3.1.1 Workshop progress

The aim of the workshop is to explore new application

for Mobil Phones Technologies in Health care by

creating 4 scenarios related to 4 different users.

The preparation of the workshop included also

participant choice and interdisciplinary team building.

Each team was shaped to comprehend 1 tutor, 2designers and 1 bioengineer. The participants have

also been chosen and distributed in the teams on the

basis of their previous experiences regarding scientific

and empirical knowledge of the target users.

The workshop lasted three days:

1st day when the research and the tools havebeen presented and the concept development

began

2nd day when participants deepened the topicsthrough further research and user interviews

3rd day dedicated to the final storyboarddevelopment and presentation

All the teams could take advantage of the consultancy

with medical and sports specialists.

The outputs of each team were a storyboard and a

concept summary. These outputs have been presented

to the movie designers who translated them in a new

storyboard format usable as reference to shooting and

producing video (narrative trikcs, shots, scenery,

actors, visual effects and infographics, soundtrack,

etc.). The movie designers also developed a

communication strategy, including image treatment

consistent with Samsungs brand image. The 4 stories

have been connected to create a social network

(Charles is Stellas the 12 years old girl

grandfather; Bob the 40 years old professionalworker is Nicoles the pregnant mother with a

three years old sonhusband).

3.1.2 Workshop Input Material

Following tools have been used to summarize the

peculiarities of the users of each group emerged in theresearch: a persona resuming users characteristics

and condition, a moodboard representing their

emotional real and desired state and a one day life

story developed together with real representants from

Fig. 2. Personas / One day Story / Moodboard

the user groups (i.e. a grandfather, a pregnant mother

with a three years old daughter, a 40 years old

professional worker and a 12 years old girl jointly with

an endocrinologist) (Fig. 2).

One day story help the participants of the

workshop to confront everyday possible healthproblems and behaviours of the targeted user groups.

As an example, One day Story of a healthy adult starts


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from defining the lifestyle of the user: where he lives,

his job, age, family and hobbies. Then his daily routine

of the work, sport and social activities and the

consequences of these outlining possible healthcare

problems or situations.

During the workshop, two discussion session has been

realized in which all groups have synthesized their

concept ideas in a chart using post-it (fig. 3).

3.1.4 Workshop Output Material

As final result of workshop experience, each group has

produced one storyboard of their proposal. According

with video producers request, each storyboard, and

their frames (Fig. 4), has been composed with movie

attributes.

Fig. 3. Group Chart in discussion session

As an outcome, each single frame with a 16:9

format as a template has been sketched with a writtendetailed explanation of the idea. Then each single

frame is compiled in a 20 frame storyboard as a result

of their proposal in order to be compatible for the

movie production. The participants of each group had

also thought about the mood music, voice type of the

narrative speaker, 3D models and 2D visualizations ofthe possible scenarios.

Fig. 4. Example of some single detailed frames.

3.1.5 Proposed Concepts

Four concept scenarios has been produced andpresented to movie production team. Bellow a brief

description of concept proposals for each target

groups.

Group 1: The concept developed for pregnant moms

is a device for the mother that gives trust, safety and

joyful feelings during her pregnancy giving an

emotional and clinical support connecting the fetus

inside the mother to the medical professionals, friends,

family and social groups.

Fig. 5. Concept for pregnant moms. (example frame)

Group 2: The concept scenario for kids and

preadolescents. According with Lang, Medical devices


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are primarily designed for adult use, resulting in

adolescents with chronic conditions using products

which have been designed with little or no

consideration for their specific needs. (Lang et al.

2010). The concept for kids is an object with specialfeatures that allows, also, instant messaging and short

range communication in order to provide a less

expensive social interaction. This is also applied to

improve the quality of life of kids with chronic

disease.

Fig. 6. Group 2- Concept for kids. (example frame)

Group3: The central point of the concept for healthyadults is "Self Care, encouraging of active life style

and eventual monitoring of health state of his family.

The application permits to keep in continuing

connection all the members of the family or the social

relationship and an instate exchange of information.

Fig. 7. Group 3- Concept for healthy adults. (example

frame)

Group 4: The concept is a support for the elderly

people to manage his everyday healthcare activities

and improve information exchange between doctor and

patient such as taking medicine when his blood

pressure isnt good or an appointment with his doctor

by an registered information about his blood pressure.

Fig. 8. Group 4- Concept for elderly people. (exampleframe)

4 Results

As results of our research, we obtained interesting

conclusions about the used methodology. Some

conclusions of the experience and recommendation are

summarized below:

Input Material, as the synthesis of the research,is an important start point for warming up the

teams. Its important to provide reports of the

research well structured but summarized, in

order to permit the team to be quickly tuned

with problems and opportunities on the

specific field of interest. In our Workshop has

been found some lacks in the transfer thecomplexity of the research. A normal power

point presentation has been used to

communicate some parts of the research (asexample: state of the art of mobile

technology).

The creative tools must be suited to the teamparticipants. Some tools, as Moodboard has

been demonstrated less useful for not design-

oriented participants. On the other hand, the

most used tool in all teams was One Day

History description.

The importance of the Workshop Director,Who is the person encharged of improve thecreative process in each project team. Actually,

the Workshop Director is a key role for drive

and generate cross-fertilization between teams

conserving their own peculiarities. Workshop

Director is useful also for reduce the periods of

creativity gaps in the teams work using

creative tools (input material).

The storyboard method used for present thefinal proposals to the moviemaker team, must

be integrated with a brief description of the

ideas and a technical description of used

technology for each function. Actually, the


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producers of the final movie has decided that

the stories presented in the storyboards, too

complicated for the movie length. In order to

discuss the section to cut without lose quality,

it was necessary study in deep the usedtechnologies on the design proposals. For this

reason we decide to create an accessory

document called technology behind the

concepts, with this material was easier

carefully chose the functionalities to represent.

7 release of storyboard has been presented bymovie team, before approvation for movie

production.

Fig. 9. Example of final movie photogram of group 1

5 Conclusion

The creative workshop was an interesting and useful

step on the general research process, but was necesary

a huge work to set-up it and to analize results. Could

be more effective giving less initial information but

give more than 2 working days to the participant. This

condition could reduce the effort of organizer and,more important, give more time to the workshop

participants to search, analize and discuse information.

In adition could be useful to involve final user, not

only on the research phase, but directly on the work

groups.

6 Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thanks to the designers andmedicians who participated in the creative workshop.

7 References

Pruitt, J. and Adlin, T., (2006) The Persona Lifecycle:

Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design,

Morgan Kaufmann

Carroll, J. M., (2002) Scenarios and Design Cognition,APCHI2002, Oct.23-26, Beijing, China: 23-46

Codesign 2000, International Conference, DEED DesignResearch Society, Coventry University, 11 13

settembre 2000Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders, (2006) Scaffolds for building

everyday creativity. In Design for EffectiveCommunications: Creating Contexts for Clarity andMeaning. Jorge Frascara (Ed.) Allworth Press, NewYork.

Lang, A. R., Martin, J. L., Sharples. S. & Crowe, J. A.

(2010) A Qualitative Assessment of Medical DeviceDesign by Healthy Adolescents, 3rd AHFE InternationalConference 2010, Miami.

Leonard Burton, D. e W. Swap (1999), When sparks fly:

Igniting creativity in groups, Harvard Business SchoolPress, Boston

Martin, J.L. et al.(2008) Medical device development: Thechallenge for ergonomics, Applied Ergonomics 39 271

283Vertelney, L., G. Curtis, (1990) Storyboards and Sketch

Prototypes for Rapid Interface Visualisation, CHI

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