Surgical Training Game

ProjectsPublished February 26, 2010 at 12:08 am No Comments

This was not really an engineering project and it was done for a class that really was not an engineering class. The name of the class was User Oriented Collaborative Design and this project was more of a thought exercise in which implementation was not required and a path to implementation was not a part of the project. Because of the way that the class was structured, I was part of the team that was tasked to design something around surgeons.  Throughout the project we struggled with contacting our users and with divisions on the team. I would not call it the prototypical team experience, but in the end we pulled it out and everything turned out OK. Having worked with design students from the Rhode Island School of Design later on in my career, the quality of the art done by a team of engineering majors is nowhere near the amazingly beautiful renderings that are produced through collaboration with real designers. Because that project contains possibly sensitive materials, this is the design experience I am choosing to share. This was a sophomore level class completed in the Spring of 2007.

Collaborators on this project were: Eamon Doyle, Clark McPheeters and Mathew Roy.

background

The purpose behind this class and the project was to get engineers to think about people. One of the hallmarks of the Olin education is a focus beyond just technical specifications and impressing on students the notion that engineering is about creating solutions for people. The entire class focused on people and the psychology/design tilt of the class was shocking to some and a welcome challenge to others. We were asked to take off our technology hats  and try to focus solely on what would provide value to our users.

observations

As a team, we were tasked with a user group that we would think of as our clients. That design target did not include a specific problem to solve. The goal the vagueness was to try to make us think broadly. We were one of two teams assigned to look at the lives of surgeons. Going in to the project, we did our best to wipe our minds of the preconceptions that we had of the group. We started off doing observations of surgeons in their natural environment. We visited a few hospitals and found a few doctors on break willing to talk very briefly about their lives. However, this tactic was very tough because our user group kept very tight schedules. In terms of observations, our breakthrough came when we were allowed to visit the hospital see the rooms for the residents and observe surgeries. The observations of surgeries and the way that residents conducted themselves outside of the operating room allowed us to create personas that allowed us to move through the design process.

personas

To move forward in the design process we needed to abstract our observations. Even though we did not record real names in our notes, we needed to separate the characteristics of our users from feelings we might have had due to the particulars of each observation. In order to achieve that separation we were taught to create fictional characters, the set of which would accurately represent the qualitative data that we gathered during our observations. More that just a vessel for the data, a persona should also include details that reflected who this character is, what their values are and tell a story about them. A sample persona that we created for this project is shown below.

The story here was to try to portray the younger generation of medical professionals. While there is no clear generational divide, we really aimed to portray someone who has grown up comfortable with the internet, video games and technology. Many of the details came from our interviews of people who met that classification. The favorite video game characteristic was invented to harden the idea in our minds that we were specifically looking at people who were part of the “Nintendo” generation, people who were still young enough to grow up with that first, popular, at home console released in 1985.

ideation

Once the personas were created, we came up with ideas through a series of exercises, including perception maps, based on the values that were expressed in the personas. After littering the walls of our work space with many different ideas, we chose about a dozen to sketch out. We then created interaction narratives for each to along with each of the sketches. The ideas were then presented to a group of surgeons for review. They provided us with feedback that we used to refine and select appropriate concepts. Through four or five rounds of this process were were able to arrive at a final concept. In order to explain the concept, I will attempt to present it through an interaction narrative.

A second stage narrative for the final concept is below:

The narrative tries to show how  a potential user would interact with the concept. In this case the we are showing the Carter persona interacting with the surgical training game that would eventually become the concept we would take forward. More accurately, this narrative portrays the young doctor entering the hospital and engaging in some competitive banter with another young doctor. Because the game is a serious training aid, it would involve some sort of fake body as well as monitors to replicate common endoscopic practices. Because endoscopy is now the most common kind of surgery and the one practiced by our real life users, we chose to focus on that kind of surgery. The game would be scored based on the accuracy and speed of the surgery. Random complications would require addressing to complete the surgery. More difficult procedures would also lead to more points. The point system is critical as it offers a reward to using the training aid; a facet that the current training methods of stapling foam and using endoscopic tools to move dried beans between cups cannot provide. At the end of the narrative, Carter and his friend set up a rematch for a later date.

conclusions

Once we had come up with a concept we had to make a mock up so that we could demonstrate the interaction that would be facilitated by the device. While we did not have tho think about the technologies that would make our device work, we did have to make a foam mock up. Since the realness of our concept was what set it apart from many existing surgery type video games we felt like we had to mack a mock body. Mannequins were well above the budget we were given to complete the project and other human like props were simply appropriate/unrealistic. Therefore, we ended up making one out of foam. Not being art students, the foam body was less than optimal but it served the purpose of allowing us to demonstrate how an interaction with our device would go.