Participatory Design with Therapists Directing Designers as
Proxies for Patients

I am currently working with Professor Mick McQuaid from the University of Michigan School of Information to investigate a new design approach. The HCI community has explored the notion of caregivers roleplaying patients to improve understanding of this population. Our approach has designers role‐playing patients and a Greek chorus of caregivers coaching them to verbalize issues relevant to the patient‐caregiver interaction. We test this on a design for music-making glove (BeatGlove) with hand therapists, enabling patients with extremely limited hand mobility to make music, both encouraging and recording patient progress.

Stay tuned for more information to follow once our research has been completed.