Systematic Application of Extreme-User Experiences: Impact on the Outcomes of an Undergraduate Medical Device Design Module

Extreme-user experiences refer to experiences that simulate the extremes of user abilities like reduced or no visual attention or auditory attention. Inspired by the needs experienced by the users who experience physical or cognitive challenges, extreme-user perspectives can make designers understand their designs from an inclusive design perspective and address the latent needs experienced by their users. Yet, they are seldom leveraged in mainstream designs that may or may not be used by extreme users, for example, medical devices. This study applies the extreme-user experiences along the initial stages of the design process to help design students identify the latent needs of six different medical devices. Students used Activity Diagrams for a systematic application of extreme-user experiences. Six teams with a total of 25 students took part in the study. We apply a latency metric to validate the identified needs and discuss the metric's impact in evaluating the latency of design needs. Outcomes support the potential of extreme-user experiences in capturing the latent design needs in medical device design and demonstrate the potential of extreme-user experiences in changing designers' perceptions over their design solutions. The proposed approach aims to help students and medical device design professionals to have a first-person experience on the nuances of user needs that get missed in the current design process. We believe this could lead to future works that focus on designs that reduce the mishaps associated with medical device design.