Buddy.
Ali Cohen, Claudia Ross, and Virginia Schreiber
2023 Richard John Livingstone Martin Humanitarian Award Recipient
Buddy is every child’s friend while at the hospital. Buddy helps children identify, express, and alter their emotions in a way that incudes the parents and nurses. Along with Buddy's physical form, we also offer an interactive app for parents to stay involved in their child's care and a nurse's chart plugin so nurses can stay up to date on how the child is feeling.
Design Opportunities
How Might We...
- Reduce pre-procedure/ appointment anxiety?
- De-stigmatize obtrusive tests like checking vitals and drawing blood?
- Educate caregivers to be a source of calm for children during treatment.
Design Goals
- Child-centered design
- Reduce anxiety in children during hospital visits
- Educational component - emotions
- Combining digital and physical environments
- Incorporate parents
- Educational component for further visits - emotional development
Mission Statement
Children often experience a high level of anticipatory pain and fear before hospital treatment which increases actual pain.
There is a need to reduce anticipatory pain in order to prevent excessive discomfort, trauma, and an aversion to medical treatment in adulthood. This will ultimately lead to a more positive hospital experience.
Research and Journey Mapping
We conducted an interview with Erica Arnau, a Child Life Specialist from CHOA. She describes her job as helping infants, children, youth and families cope with the stress and uncertainty of acute and chronic illness, injury, trauma, disability, loss and bereavement in the healthcare and community settings. With some key information from Erica and after attending a Journey Mapping Seminar held by Cognizant, we created a Journey Map for children receiving a shot.
We used Medline resources to research each step of the process. This is the most common fear of children in a healthcare environment. We decided to follow the journey of both the child and parent since they both will be involved in the process.
Evolving Buddy
With our contacts, we were able to test emotional association with regards to LCD faces with children in our age range.
This was done by showing the user a face and asking what emotion it conveys. This helped us decide which faces Buddy should use with each emotion. Testing the effectiveness of recommended calming techniques was also included in our field research. We also tested the intuitive size and structure of Buddy with children and their different hand sizes.
We tested parents/caregivers on their navigation through the app by allowing them to use the app and surveying questions afterwards. For nurses, we tested ease of integration of app/system with the current hospital system.
CMF
Buddy’s color scheme should be clean and neutral. The outside layer would be a semi transparent silicon with the inside layer being a light, neutral color like beige. The outside semi transparent layer allows the electronic face components to shine through.
Buddy will be made out of silicone as the outside layer for a calming squishy feeling as well as an ABS shell on the inside to house the electronic components of Buddy. The handle, feet, and dial will be a slightly harder silicone than the outside.
Buddy will have a translucent matte finish so the facial expression under the layer of silicone could be seen through. The inside layer would also be matte so as not to interfere or provide extra reflections distracting the viewer.
Electronics
The code used to build Buddy’s faces pulls the images from a micro SD card that is inserted into the screen.
Each photo is pulled up on the screen and then given a specific “delay” value to remain on the screen before moving to the next photo on the SD card.
We configured Buddy to display his faces with a 3.5 LCD screen, programmed by an Arduino uno, powered by AA batteries. We also included a small bluetooth speaker.
Form Iterations
The App
We decided to create an app for the parent rather than a website in order to allow notifications and personalizations not supported on the web. While creating the Buddy App, we wanted to keep the interface as simple as possible for the potentially overwhelmed parent. We therefore decided to display all of the needed information on the home page, allowing the user to click on each section to learn more.
The Nurse's Hub
The Nurse Hub allows nurses to monitor patients without being physically present. It is important for nurses to be aware of the emotional state of their patient. We designed the nurse’s hub to be as seamless as possible so as to not overwhelm them, while also conveying the key updates on patient’s well being. We included a real time chat function for the nurse to stay up to date with the parent and a tracking chart that updates with the emotional state of the patient.
Teaser Video
In our teaser video, we wanted to portray the context in which Buddy would be used, his general functions, and the importance of having a product like Buddy for the patient, the nurses, and the parents.
Our goal was to convey the care that everyone around a child feels for the child; whether a nurse or caretaker or parent. We evoked a hopeful feeling in our teaser video to convey that with innovation, we can help children on their journey.
