An Extreme User Approach to Identify Latent Needs: Adaptation and Application in Medical Device Design

The perspectives of users who experience any form of physical or cognitive challenges have the potential to capture the latent design needs of the general population of users. These ‘extreme user perspectives’ are some of the extreme conditions that could influence the users’ experience with a design. This study applies a systematic approach that provides a step by step guidance to select the appropriate extreme user perspectives during the initial stages of a design process. This systematic approach is applied to identify the latent needs associated with six different medical devices. This research leverages the potential of simulated extreme user perspectives to amplify designers’ abilities to identify latent unarticulated needs through an empathic experience. The extreme user perspectives in this study are derived from user Activity Diagrams that represent the user interactions associated with the corresponding medical devices. A latency metric is introduced and evaluated for its potential to identify the latent needs. Six teams from a Healthcare Product Design course with 25 participants were involved in the study. Results demonstrate the application and effectiveness of the proposed systematic approach to capture the latent needs associated with all six devices. The potential applications of the proposed latency metric are discussed for future applications.