Author(s): Vanessa Jiménez Gil, Raquel Marzo Roselló, Giuseppe Caprara, Arizona Dylan Vitoria, José Navarro García

When developing a new healthcare product, stringent technical and certification requirements must be met, and design and usability aspects must be taken into account. Involving potential users at an early stage is essential if all their needs are to be aligned holistically. People-driven innovation is a tried and tested methodology that incorporates the user perspective throughout the development process, making them active contributors from concept to product launch.

In this context, UVISA HEALTH, recognized by EIT-Health^[1] as one of Europe’s most innovative healthcare start-ups, has asked the Instituto de Biomecánica (IBV) to provide a user-centered design service to generate conceptual proposals for an innovative product to treat vaginal infections. This service is seen as a comprehensive collaboration in which the designers’ perspectives, the company's experience and the input of potential end-users are brought together to design a product that not only meets the technical requirements, but also takes into account the preferences and usability demanded by the market. This article explores in detail how this synergy of vision and the commitment to participatory and user-centered design is a defining factor in the development of products from their initial stages.

 

INTRODUCTION

UVISA HEALTH is currently developing an intravaginal medical device for the home treatment of vaginal infections and has asked the IBV to provide a user-centered design consultancy service within the framework of the EIT Health ULabs programme. The service offered by the IBV allows healthcare start-ups to quickly incorporate user input during the early stages of the development of innovative products and services to ensure market acceptance. The service takes the technical requirements defined by the company itself and enriches them with ergonomic and usability requirements, based on the IBV's expertise in medical devices, human factors and user-centered design. Various people-driven innovation techniques are then applied to facilitate co-creation and participatory design and to generate conceptual designs for the medical device in question, taking into account the needs and preferences of potential users, which serve the company as a starting point for the more detailed design phase. The aim of this service is to provide support, direction and guidance throughout the design process, always ensuring that the needs and requirements of the target audience remain firmly in focus.

DEVELOPMENT AND METHODOLOGY

The main element of user-driven design methodology in relation to the development of a conceptual design is a co-creation session. In this case, this session was held in person with a wide range of professionals: UVISA HEALTH staff, IBV researchers with different technical expertise and staff from its healthcare division, as well as professionals from the design unit. As could not be otherwise, there was a varied sample of potential users of the product. Two actions were carried out prior to the co-creation session, as described below.   

First, a benchmarking analysis of intravaginal devices and/or related categories was carried out, with a twofold objective: On the one hand, to obtain information on possible intravaginal devices already on the market or under development that have a similar objective to the device being developed by UVISA HEALTH. This market analysis allowed us to identify the technical and usability advantages and disadvantages of these products, and provided material for critical analysis at expert level, assessing potential improvements that the UVISA HEALTH product could satisfy. On the other hand, the benchmarking also provided awareness-raising materials that we were able to use in the co-creation session we had scheduled as part of the proposed participatory design process described below.

The benchmarking included an extended product search, covering a broader context than the "intravaginal medical device" described above. Searching for categories related to the product, but distant in context and purpose of use, allowed us to obtain inspirational material from other intravaginal devices and products on the market, even if they did not have the same functionality. Broadening the focus and looking at related categories, and others further away from the product, encourages divergent thinking, which is essential in the ideation phase.  Figure 1 shows the visual materials generated for the co-creation session, extracted from the benchmarking exercise. 

Figure 1. Repository of visual material extracted from the benchmarking exercise.

Secondly, and in parallel with the benchmarking exercise described above, proto-personas were created to complement the awareness-raising material we had prepared for the co-creation session. A proto-persona is a semi-fictional representation of potential users of a product or service, created to help us to understand our user profile. Proto-personas are usually created on the basis of information gathered from indirect sources, such as potential market research and/or stakeholder interviews, etc. By creating and placing these fictional characters in a specific context, taking their needs into consideration, we can understand and connect with our potential end users, putting them at the center of the product design and development process. Understanding their realities, challenges and pain points in relation to the problem to be solved helps the User Experience and Design teams to understand the context in which the product will be used, as well as the behaviors, attitudes, desires and goals of our potential end users and the difficulties they face. As can be seen in figure 2, 2 proto-personas were created with the target audience profile of the intravaginal device developed by UVISA HEALTH.

Figure 2. Proto-persons generated as awareness-raising material.

Following the benchmarking and once the awareness-raising materials had been generated, an in-person co-creation session was held in the co-creation laboratory of the Instituto de Biomecánica. The participants in the  session, who were selected from both UVISA HEALTH and from the IBV’s research unit, had different technical profiles and expertise in the development and design of medical devices. Women with different profiles and personal circumstances (with/without children, between 24 and 45 years old, among others) were also invited to participate in order to obtain different insights into the product and to enrich the collaborative design process.

Figure 3. Pictures of the co-creation session held at the IBV.

14 women attended the session, which lasted two and a half hours. The participants were divided into 3 working teams. Using different co-creation techniques, the session involved different work phases aimed at generating conceptual proposals and ideas for aspects that should be considered in the home treatment device for vaginal infections that UVISA HEALTH is developing. The session was therefore split into in two phases with pre-planned activities and times: The first activity focused on “ideation”, using the braindrawing technique to generate as many ideas as possible, “broadening the focus” through divergent thinking, which combines individual thinking and group feedback. The second activity focused on developing a solution to a product design challenge, the aim being that the teams should come up with different solutions to the same challenge. The aim of this activity was to “narrow the focus” through convergent thinking, to materialize the most open ideas from the previous phase and to produce sketches of the product that were as specific and detailed as possible.

To elaborate a little more on the braindrawing technique, suffice it to say that it is a creative exercise that helps to generate new ideas or develop existing ones, in which participants generate conceptual solutions in a visual brainstorming session.
The co-creation session produced a total of 18 conceptual ideas for the development of the intravaginal device. These ideas evolved from an initial drawing to which the other participants gradually added their own individual contributions in order to achieve a richer, more complete result. The objective of this phase was to generate as many ideas as possible. Figure 4 shows a repository of the solutions proposed during the ideation phase, and their subsequent organization and classification according to specific characteristics of the intravaginal device expansion system - one of the characteristics that the IBV design team had been asked to develop and respond to in their conceptual designs. 

AUTHOR'S AFFILIATION

Instituto de Biomecánica de Valencia
Universitat Politècnica de València
Edificio 9C. Camino de Vera s/n
(46022) Valencia. Spain

Figure 4. Repository of ideas generated by the braindrawing technique.

Subsequently, after sharing and discussing the possible solutions that had emerged during the ideation phase, the teams were then given 3 challenges designed to generate synergies and develop sketches of the intravaginal device through a collaborative design that was as detailed as possible. Basically, the aim of this part of the session was to narrow down the focus of the ideation phase and to obtain as “grounded” as possible designs and ideas that would serve as a guide and/or inspiration for the IBV design team tasked with the final development of the conceptual designs. Figure 5 shows the teamwork carried out during this part of the session, as well as some of the participants’ key comments and ideas on how to approach the product design keeping from a usability perspective.

Figure 5. Example of team solutions to a challenge and key feedback from participants.

To conclude the co-creation session, before the design team from the Instituto de Biomecánica began working on the conceptual designs, a final meeting was held with UVISA HEALTH to critically discuss the different solutions generated during the session. The most interesting ideas with potential for future development were addressed from a holistic point of view and potential technical barriers and solutions in terms of product development, safety and marketing as a medical device were discussed, as well as, of course, the usability and design requirements of potential end users.

Once all the material had been compiled and generated, both at a technical level and from the collaborative co-creation and design session, the design process for the intravaginal device was iterated, rethinking the initially proposed design requirements and introducing new considerations and demands. Following a new internal co-creation meeting of the IBV team, a consensus was reached with the company to develop 3 conceptual designs, which were the ones that were finally presented as the result of the project.

CONCLUSIONS

Involving users at all stages of product development, and not only at the product validation stage, allows a company to be in tune with the needs and demands of its target audience at all key points of the innovation process. In this case, involving a multidisciplinary team from the company itself and from the IBV, as well as potential users of the intravaginal device, has facilitated the development of the conceptual designs of the product in the initial stages, using a collaborative design process that minimized the risk of overlooking key aspects in the final development of the intravaginal device. 

^[1] EIT Health is a network of approximately 130 best-in-class health innovators, backed by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT), an agency of the European Union. For more information, please visit: www.eithealth.eu

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rojas, J. (2023, September 14). Learn How to Use Sketching as an Ideation Method. Interaction Design Foundation - IxDF. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/etch-a-sketch-how-to-use-sketching-in-user-experience-design

Van der Lugt, Remko. (2002). Brainsketching and How it Differs from Brainstorming. Creativity and Innovation Management. 11. 43 - 54. 10.1111/1467-8691.00235.

Van der Lugt, Remko. (2005). How sketching can affect the idea generation process in design group meetings. Design Studies. 26. 101-122. 10.1016/j.destud.2004.08.003.

https://designthinking.ideo.com/blog/the-one-thing-you-need-to-generate-great-ideas

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank UVISA HEALTH for the trust they have placed in the IBV for the development of their new product.