Sprint 4: From Research To Ideation 🪐
Welcome back! We are a-CUTE Wounds Warriors, a team from the Master’s of Human-Computer Interaction program at Carnegie Mellon University, partnering with University Hospitals of Cleveland to improve outcomes for at-home patient-administered wound care.
Success Metrics Discussion with Client 📈
After a well-rested spring break, we resumed sprint 4 with an engaging discussion during an onsite visit with our clients about patients’ success metrics. We presented our preliminary ideas, including metrics such as the number of phone calls, ER room visits, and instances of patient complications. Feedback from our clients highlighted concerns about the infrequency of certain metrics like ER visits, making comparisons challenging, and the potential biases in measurements, particularly in call volume.
Consequently, we concluded that relying on patients’ self-assessment of their efficacy and comfort levels might offer a more direct and reliable approach. To operationalize this, we could implement metrics such as confidence ratings for patients to assess daily. It could be a follow-up system where patients would be asked to compare their current confidence level with that from the previous day, facilitating easier self-assessment.
Winning our presentation of sprint outcomes with macarons ✌️
Having conducted extensive research on our target domain — at-home wound care for acute wounds post-Mohs surgery for skin cancer — and started broadening our perspectives by selecting analogous worlds to look into, we now aim to dive deeper into these relevant fields. This involves seeking insights about how the practices and technologies of these relevant fields may be applicable to our case. Additionally, we seek to understand broader patient barriers regarding more types of wound care. Hopefully by the end of the sprint, we will be able to narrow down our research focus and solution space for more meaningful ideations.
- Understand broader patient-facing barriers that affect their at-home wound care. Assumption: Gathering data on patient experiences across all surgical wounds is more insightful than solely focusing on skin cancer wounds.
- Explore more innovative and/or the best practices in relevant domains, and consider/summarize how they could be applied to wound-care experience. Assumption: Similar domains may have already addressed problems or barriers akin to those in our research, offering potential solutions transferrable to our project.
- Synthesize our learnings up until this point in order to narrow down our research focus, and understand how we can best measure patient success. Assumption: Effective synthesis can lead to spicier insights and reveals patterns for us to converge on one / a few focused areas.
We presented our outcomes in class and were awarded first place, along with a delightful package of macarons!
Crazy 8s Inspired by Failure of Survey 🎨
How did the survey fail?
In our effort to grasp broader patient pain points in wound care, we crafted a survey and distributed it among skin cancer, wound care, and cancer care groups via Facebook, online forums, and Reddit. Unfortunately, we received 0 responses and faced bans from several groups.
Pivoting moment
This setback prompted us to reconsider our approach: rather than seeking hidden pain points from random patients, why not boldly make assumptions and creatively validate patient needs, while uncovering any additional ones through a more reliable medium like Dr. Carroll’s clinic?
Crazy 8s
We revisited our insights wall, distilled patient needs, and engaged in a collective crazy 8s exercise with the team. We plan to select about 5~7 ideas from the crazy 8s to conduct a speed dating session with patients at UHC later on.
Next, team members took turns spending 5 minutes on each other’s ideas, leaving comments, questions, or additional suggestions to enhance understanding of each potential idea.
Idea Funneling & Storyboarding
We revisited our list of patients’ needs, focusing on the 4 most prominent ones. Then, we selected ideas from our crazy 8s exercise that could effectively address these needs, considering varying levels of riskiness to gauge patients’ comfort with different levels of technology.
Subsequently, we transformed these ideas into engaging, context-based stories presented in a sequence of problem, solution, and resolution, accompanied by leading questions and discussion points for each scenario.
Rapid Prototype 🤖
We consolidated ideas from our crazy 8s and conducted a rapid prototyping session using paper, pen, and Figma. Our prototype entails a physical wound care kit with an integrated smart mirror, providing step-by-step, live instructions to patients. All necessary materials are included in the kit, with each item highlighted on the kit corresponding to the step requiring it.
The Path Forward🚶♀️
Moving into Sprint 5, we're excited to return to UHC for a speed dating session with patients, using our storyboards to validate needs. Additionally, we'll rapidly prototype and parallel prototype more ideas, conducting guerrilla testing with people in our vicinity. Stay tuned for the next update from the a-CUTE Wounds Warriors! #AWW #HealthCareInnovation #SprintRecap
*This project is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge and is not human subjects research.
