Week 9

After talking with my peers, my father who’s had cataract surgery, and Eric and Anuprita, I have narrowed my concept to a cataract surgery visualizer to relieve patient anxiety around upcoming procedures.

Point of intervention

This experience should take place directly after an appointment in which the doctor explains the steps of an upcoming procedure to the patient. According to this video by an eye surgeon and the recollection of my interview patients, doctors explain the procedure mostly through verbal communication and supporting diagrams. While the patients are told that the procedure will be painless, most of the explanation centers around what will happen to them and not what they will experience. I am hoping that leaving the clinic after experiencing the visualizer will prime the patients with pleasant visions of colored lights, so frightening diagrams are not the last mental image they take home.

Viewfinder vs Amphitheater

This week I compared the attributes of actualizing this concept as a type of hand-held viewfinder or a small amphitheater within the clinic. The benefits of each can be summarized as follows:

• viewfinder— more true to the surgery, can talk through it with the doctor, likely a one time experience
• amphitheater— private and reflective space, experience it with others, stay as long as you please

I believe both have significant benefits and should be explored in conjunction with each other. However, considering the constraints of working fully remotely past Thanksgiving, I feel it is best to explore the physical capabilities of the viewfinder first while I still have access to the shop.

Supplementary research

Since I am focusing on the visual experience of the surgery, I had to do supplementary research on the actual step-by-step process of the procedure (most of my research had been focused on the examination room experience). I found some great videos detailing the individual steps which help me understand when and how the visuals may change.

Prototyping

While exploring different ideas for viewfinders, I realized that the visualization should only affect one eye at a time and therefore does not need to appear as a traditional viewfinder. It also does not need to be an entire animation or VR simulation —since it is simulating blurry visuals in an OR setting, the lens can use the light from the office to create a visual experience.

I have a jeweler’s magnifying loupe at my disposal, which I unscrewed and added bits of wool to experiment with an altered lens effect.

During surgery, the patient is instructed to stare up at the bright light above them. When held against the eye and directed up at a bright light, here’s what was visible through the loupe:

I used wool pieces so as not to damage the glass, but I believe that creating a series of colored lenses could be a viable way to visualize the surgery. While it may be too early to narrow my focus, I started to conceptualize how I could package a set of lenses to be used by patients in the examination room.

While I like how clean and compact this solution is, it needs to consider how the patient will flip through each lens and how that might disrupt their visual experience.