Well, that would be cool…
There are a ton of things that would be cool to build or research or modify out there. There are a ton of different ways that you could build them or conduct research about them or modify the existing devices and technology.
But should you?
We were rolling along just like everybody else working on our need statements: adding synonyms, rearranging clauses, attempting to stay away from solutions, all sorts of really cool stuff. We were even moving into what must a solution to this need have and what do we want it to have.
This was the point that we realized we knew pretty much nothing about the thing that we actually wanted to accomplish. Sure, we know enough about electrodes and wireless signals to create a solution. It would probably even be a really cool solution. It would probably do something really cool. But would it help anybody? Would anybody actually use it?
We realized we had more questions then answers so we turned to the keeper of all knowledge: Google. Google’s great and we found answers to a lot of the more general stuff about monitoring systems and electrodes and how much a company would sell you one for. Again, this was cool, but unfortunately Google couldn’t tell us everything we wanted to know. It couldn’t tell us how parents interacted with the monitoring system, how nurses felt being responsible for maintaining the system, or the workflow around the many parts of the system. To answer these we needed to get off the Internet and into the real world.
So we went and saw Dr. Frank. If you don’t know Dr. Frank she’s one of the PICU doctors and she’s great. We asked Dr. Frank some of our questions and she quickly pulled nurses, that were not busy to come talk to us. This was great. There were a bunch of things that we would never have found out from Google. For example: the box where you plug in all your electrode leads, pulse oximeter, and blood pressure cuff is really heavy (probably in the ballpark of 40-50 pounds) and it hangs above the patient. This can be scary for nurses when the patient has to be moved and they have to get this brick down without disconnecting the patient. They don’t want to drop it on the patient. That would be uncool.
Dr. Frank even introduced us to one of the parents that was there. From the Mom we got to hear a lot more about how things get in the way and how things are confusing. She stressed that even just knowing more about whatever is going on makes the whole thing less scary.
All of this was cool. We were learning a lot. We were getting references to back up our musts and wants that have to be submitted at the end of the week. All in all trip was a ten out of ten, I definitely recommend getting off your laptop and going to talk to someone that literally gets paid because they know what they’re talking about.
But as we were walking out we realized something: our need didn’t match their need.
They were involving the same topic, but what we were targeting to fix is not what actually needs fixing. It’s not totally back to the drawing board and most of our “must haves” and “wants” for the solution still apply.
But we need to refocus.
We need to target the problem that actually needs fixing.
This is an iterative process. We started down one path and now we’re going to try another. Sure, we spent a bunch of time on what is now probably irrelevant to our end goal, but that’s cool.
That’s cool because this isn’t about us. We aren’t the ones that need something fixed. We aren’t the ones that will be using the solution everyday. In our case it’s nurses, parents and patients that will be using this solution. So we have to go back a couple steps. That’s cool.
That’s cool because this is about them.
BME Design 