As some of you may know I grew up in a toxic fundamentalist Christian revival cult which I blog about at My Exodus. The church was largely against medical intervention, instead choosing to believe in the healing power of God. Whatever your religious views, the fact is that up until the age of 25 when I left the cult in 2008 I had received very little medical attention. My only real contact with hospitals and doctors was is 2002 when I was airlifted out of Molonglo Gorge after falling off a cliff and cracking my head.
Over the last two years since leaving the cult I’ve started to engage with the medical profession and health care services. I’ve now seen a GP perhaps a dozen times, a psychologist and today … a dentist.
As an experience designer all this exposure to medical services and health care professionals is quite eye-opening because everything about these experiences is new and overwhelming.
I’m not going to say that design researchers need to experience first-hand the situations, contexts and environs they design for but first-person experience does provide a unique insight that may be difficult to perceive through observation and interviews.
Of course my experience won’t be typical. First of all I’m a first-time user of these services and facilities which may not be representative of the majority although it could be valid if your research is focussed on first-timers. Secondly as a designer I’m going in there looking for good and poor experience, looking for opportunities to improve so I’m in a different mindset to “typical” patients and consumers.
Thankfully Jenny set up the appointment with a reputable dentist and although dental work generally is not comfortable it was overall a good experience. I was planning on just getting a check-up but turned out I needed three fillings so I was there for a while. The dentist took the time to take me through the x-rays, explain decay, the procedure for removing and filling the cavities. I probably would have liked a little more of a walk-through during the hour-long procedure as uncertainty can cause anxiety and it’s a little hard to ask questions when your mouth is stuffed with a rubber sheet, extraction tube and dental drill.
The only pre-arranged signal was if I needed suction. Probably could have done with an additional one to signal when they jammed the edge of my upper lip against my teeth with tools as that was a little uncomfortable but otherwise really impressed with the care and attention to patient comfort.
As I said, I don’t believe it’s necessary for researchers to experience these things first hand and is certainly not sufficient evidence to support design activities but my experience today did give me an appreciation for the value of walking in another’s shoes. There won’t always be opportunities for design researchers to experience situations first hand. For example, you can’t really experience dental work or surgery if you don’t need work. It’s not like going through a supermarket checkout, buying a car or getting your income support payments.
I remember reading a particularly inspirational account of a researcher who wanted to experience life as an elderly person. To simulate (as best she could) the experience of the deteriorated physical state of an elderly person one of the things she did was put her hands in ice to reduce the mobility of her fingers much like arthritis and then attempt to perform everyday tasks.
If you can, give it a go. Don’t just write down the words people use to describe their feelings and perceptions but actually experience the doubt, trust, fear, elation, anxiety and confidence yourself. Don’t watch the patient, be the patient.
// purecaffeine.com, UX, design, social media and Gov 2.0 blog by designer Nathanael Boehm, Canberra, Australia. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.
