NEEDLE PHOBIA
IDEA
Immediately before going to the hospital the child registers with an app, selects a name, theme, gender and size. Once they have arrived at the hospital they will walk around the waiting room to find 'creation stations'. Each will allow them to build the creature, with options like colour, texture and sounds from a template of creatures to adjust the size of limbs and its head. They can customise it which is an essential aspect.
If they have more time in the waiting room they can interact with their creature by feeding it and giving it water. Then they go into the doctor’s room and where they will meet the creature, there will be an iPad in front of their seat that they sit for the needle. The creature will then interact with the child as per each stage of the injection. Whilst the nurses are getting ready it will walk around, dance or perform tricks to take their attention away from the staff preparation. As the nurses clean the area with an antiseptic wipe the creature will lick the arm. Finally as the needle is being injected the creature will kiss them.
Overall I wanted children to have more positive experiences when visiting hospitals. The child should to not feel like a pawn or feel like they don’t have agency, as the phobia can make them feel disempowered and helpless, especially because needles are often required in cases of chronic illness and important procedures. Needle phobias often develop at a young age and while some children ‘grow out’ the phobia, other children develop an avoidance of healthcare and medical professionals. This results in a decline in their health and wellbeing. We wanted to empower children that have a needle phobia so that they don’t feel frightened or in pain while the procedure is being performed. We used design methods to ensure that the child’s progress in overcoming their needle phobia isn’t hindered when they visit the hospital for a procedure. It’s was our hope to design something that doesn’t interfere with medical procedures and helps the process of overcoming the phobia.
INSIGHT
This project was completed in a group of 5. I focused on including all stakeholders (children, parents, medical workers) in the design process through a variety of co-design activities to ensure that we developed a product that adhered to the needs of all involved in the needle procedure. Due to covid-19 we were unable to get large amounts of people together so we broke our participants into multiple groups, parents and children then medical workers. We developed new co-design activities and strategies that allowed us to reach and include a number of stakeholders, via online mediums like zoom and miro. We needed to move away from traditional co-design workshops to adhere to government rules, yet to ensure we were getting enough information and feedback from participants.
IMPACT
This new design does not fully distract the children from the situation, instead allows them to associate a more positive experience with hospitals and injections.
Process
RESEARCH
To gather primary research we developed two co-design lego themed activities, for both children and parents. They were designed to suit the lego theme to make the activity more playful and less confronting for the participants targeted. The first focused on the stakeholders developing a character using colours, stickers and other craft items. They then needed to list both positives and negatives they wanted character to have. This activity allowed us to develop a project that allows the children and parents to embody the positive attributes identified in the co-design activity. They then were given 3 scenarios that they have to story board how their character would ideally handle the situation. We then held a different co-design activity via zoom for the medical workers that was more appropriate for their field and expertises. These workshops were transcribes and analysed to identify key themes and ideas to focus on to create 3 personas.
PERSONA
Each session was recorded and transcribed, then key quotes were extracted using a thematic analysis table. This helped to identify key themes needed to be included into our final design. From here we developed 3 personas; Nick Bryant, Lily Jenkins and Amanda Rodger, each embodying different themes.
LOW FIDELITY PROTOTYPING & TESTING
From all this research we then generated a variety of innovative ideas that would suit each needs of the personas. We decided to develop 'Creature Creation'. This concept would not fully distract the children from the needle, but approach the situation with a more enjoyable and friendly manner. It would start the process prior to the appointment to minimise anxiety built up waiting for the needle. We developed this concept using low fidelity prototypes; sketches, wireframes and paper prototypes.
The Paper Prototypes were based on the sketches and wireframes. The aim was to get feedback on the character development process and what they thought of the idea. We got both Nyree and Chloe from the Co-design session to test the paper prototype. Prior to the paper prototype session they were briefed about the idea and how the experience will work. This prototype consisted of 4 steps to resemble the selection process a child would take using a mobile or tablet in the doctors waiting room. They were handed one at a time. Using the pull tab they were provided with a range of selections for each part of the process to symbolise swiping on the app, these included; gender, theme, texture and body, to personalise and build their character. After they have completed step 4 the designer assembled their character in their setting to present to the users to resemble them meeting in the doctor’s room for their needle. This was a very quick way to get feedback to improve the concept and to see if this sparked interest with stakeholders.
MID - HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPING & TESTING
From there we made further iterations and developed the final design of the app. We developed a range of mid to high fidelity wireframes for both the children and guardians app to plan out the interface. These were then tested with a persona based walk through to see how each stakeholder would react to the app and how it would work for the entire needle procedure.
