Initial question for thought
Research
I began my research to gain insights into the chiropractors and understand what their day-to-day work is like. What unique needs, goals, and pain points define their everyday experiences?
From my initial question, there were three main discovery pillars for my approach:
Clinical Expertise
Workflows
Patient Relationships
Key Insights
Chiropractors struggle to find the optimal treatment decision for their patients, and may default to "good enough" solutions subject to their individual practical experience. This problem compounds into greater ones as they weigh factors including safety risk and time constraints.
Below are concerns I discovered from them that further define the problem:
Empathise with chiropractors.
Ambiguity in methods
It was critical to first understand what chiropractors' core methodologies are in practice. Based on interviews and secondary research, turns out, there was actually a lack of consensus on selecting the most ideal approach to care for patient conditions.
“
There are many many many chiropractic techniques that exist out there, but sometimes we can't be certain (on which one is right).
“
As a profession, we don't have a very solid agreement on what works best.
Quotes from interviews
Consequently, the type of treatment any patient receives is often determined more by the practitioner, rather than by diagnosis, due to the ambiguity in clinical methods. This makes chiropractic care heavily reliant on individual expertise, causing uncertainty in care quality and practitioner burnouts.
Safety-first
Realistically, the situation is further complicated by the dominant model of patient safety.
In the realm of spinal treatment, chiropractors must carefully address safety concerns —— specifically, the risk of adverse events as a result of spinal manipulation.
Chiropractor's safety-first mindset and caution add layers of complexity to their decision-making, leading them to default to familiar, conservative methods, which comes with a caveat: the safest choice isn't always the most effective.
“
"I'm here and the only thing I have to do is to get you better. I have to really put my efforts to help you, using my skills."
Quotes from interviews
Time-sensitive, Face-to-face
I also noticed that chiropractors work in fast-paced, isolated environments. They are routinely handling a high volumes of patients, with most sessions taking place within short and limited time windows.
Additionally, chiropractors engage in close contacts with their patients every day and there is a strong emphasis on face-to-face communication in their practices.
These time constraints, compounded by the face-to-face setting, has made their decision-making process more stressful and challenging.
“
Our daily and even weekly schedule is packed and busy. Every day is a sprint: we meet our patients, we diagnose, and adjust, back to back.
Quotes from interviews
Design Goal
What it leads to design:
Informative
Provide diagnosis-driven, evidence-informed decision support.
Timely
Automate data entry and sync information in real time.
Seamless
A non-disruptive, adaptable copilot that streamlines clinical workflows.
Ideation
Mixed Reality (MR) offers a wealth of exciting opportunities for healthcare. How might we design the right decision tool for chiropractors that is empowering, and not distracting?
I began my ideation by creating a moodboard to explore various mixed-reality interactions and distilled a few themes for inspiration.
Final Deliverables
Information at a glance.
Synchronises patient data with the clinical Electronic Health Records (EHR) system, and updates it continuously as they progress through the chiropractic procedure.
Chiropractors can review their patient's details at a glance while still engaging in face-to-face communication with them.
Visualise the unseen. And interact.
A bold mixed-reality interaction concept that leverages digital twin technology.
Constructs a dynamic 3D model of a patient's spine directly from diagnostic imaging data. Accessible via the left-hand toolbar, chiropractors can interact with this virtual replica in real time during assessments to simulate biomechanical conditions and visualise potential treatment outcomes.
Context-aware copilot in real time.
Through voice commands, initiates data-driven research process to analyse the spinal treatment decision, bridging the gap between practitioner expertise and empirical evidence.
Informs the practitioner to proceed with caution when the research process does not retrieve sufficient evidence supporting their treatment decision.
In the meantime, helps connect to a call with another expert available who can oversee and discuss the ideal treatment plan.
Takeaways
Keep things moving.
Designing can be stressful, especially when working on a new concept that you have never touched on. The best way to handle this is to always keep things moving. Start from scratch, gather inspirations, and gradually build your ideas from lo-fi to hi-fi.
Stay focused on the problem.
Emerging technologies like MR/VR and AI are exciting to play with, yet it's all too easy to get carried away. While it is thrilling to imagine how they can change everything, ultimately, the primary focus must remain on addressing the user's problem.
Throughout the design process, I kept reminding myself not to be distracted by the mixed reality itself, but to concentrate on what really needs to be solved. Even to this date, I still have wonder: Have I truly developed the right tool for my audience? Would there be a better solution, without "mixed reality"?
Design with users, not just for them.
Thinking like the users doesn't actually make you a user. I would never be able to understand their challenges in depth without interviewing with those chiropractors in field. It is absolutely critical to involve users from the very beginning of the design process—discover with them, define the problem with them, design with them, and test with them.