Scenario-Based Methods for Hard-to-Reach Populations in Healthcare

Abstract

Scenario-based design (SBD) is an iterative concept-generating method where designers and researchers create short narratives to develop concepts for a design. This method also allows for rapid revision since it incorporates a way of assessing the claims and pros and cons of the concepts in each scenario. There are four types of scenarios that can be created and assessed, but the overall method remains flexible. We held three sessions with design and human computer interaction students. The objective of these sessions was to brainstorm a few unique concepts for a tool that would provide automated feedback to primary care physicians about their interactions with patients. In this paper, we detail our process and how we adapted and applied the scenario-based design methodology. Due to clinicians’ often limited time and design experience, we adapted SBD methods to help nonclinical designers better understand the context of clinical work settings. To adapt the methods, we 1) held a preliminary design workshop with clinicians to sessions to inform the scenarios, 2), involved designers in the SBD sessions, and 3) provided the non-clinical participants with relevant contextual and background information about primary care settings.