Developing Assistive Bedside Furniture for Early Postoperative Mobilization in a Healthcare Setting With an Attentive Empathetic Design Approach

Objectives: This work endeavored to design and develop a tool to assist surgical patients with postoperative mobilization in a hospital. Background: Early postoperative mobilization after surgery can effectively help prevent complications, but it is difficult to achieve in practice. Method: An attentive empathetic design approach was used to gain insights into the users’ functional needs, characteristics, contexts, as well as their emotional needs, behaviors, and psychology. The insights led to a design that leveraged psychological heuristics and habit-building principles to effect necessary mindset and behavioral changes of the stakeholders. Over four iterations, design ideas were prototyped, tested, and improved with participation of 30 patients and 30 nurses. Results: Valuable insights were discovered. Most importantly, besides the medically critical need to avoid postoperative complications, the patients also had emotional needs for independence, confidence, and self-worthiness, while the nurses needed the patients’ trust. Consequently, assistive bedside furniture prototypes were designed to enable the patients to move around safely by themselves. Feedback on the prototypes showed that the patients sat up more often, enjoyed doing more activities, became more confident and less fearful of moving around, and felt less burdening on the care providers. Moreover, the nurses appreciated that the prototypes reduced their patient-mobilization workload, facilitated patient empowerment, and improved their relationship with the patients. Conclusions: An attentive empathetic design approach can comprehend complex challenges of and subsequently design an effective solution for healthcare contexts, in which the stakeholders’ medical necessities intertwine with emotional, psychological, behavioral, and sociocultural needs.