Arch — Connecting remote doctors to their patients through an AR enviroment.

Problem

Remote healthcare consulting is a big challenge, the screen of a video call limits the richness of the real world and compromises the healthcare experience for both doctor and patient.

Solution

Arch bridges the remote gap by bringing the patient to the doctor's office through augmented reality, making the remote consultation more intuitive and engaging. Arch also lets the doctor feel the patient's vitals through vibration in the central interface.

The central interface allows for collaborative interaction with AR and lets the doctor focus more on the patient.

Our approach is a full body scan of the people, and projecting those in augmented reality at their opponent. This creates an immersive experience of togetherness and allows both doctor and patient to express themselves using their full body.

Concept Video

Highlights & Contribution

Research

We conducted field research in Storuman, a municipality in the southern Lapland region that has been using remote healthcare solutions since the 1990s.

We mapped out our personal experiences with remote healthcare and mapped the healthcare system and its stakeholders to gain overview in its complexity.

Sacrificial Prototyping

Generating low-fi prototypes of ideas to sacrifice them for insights. We exposed these interventions to stakeholders and observed their approach to and perception of them. We also used them as conversation starters in interviews with doctors.

This gave us the opportunity to evaluate the relevance of directions early on in the process.

Evaluating

In a remote workshop, we presented our physical map and sacrificial prototypes. We gave the participants time to give anonymous, written feedback using a form. When we asked the participants how they envisioned healthcare and how these concepts fit into their mental models, several trends emerged: Personalised, Patient-centric, Social and Data Driven.

Next to the workshop, we conducted 8 expert interviews during the exploration and conceptualization phase of our design process.

Bodystorming

This method was used to gather insights in what a collaborative space could look like by acting out remote healthcare consultation scenarios and how technology would assist in this process.

Experience Prototyping

I created a prototype to mimic the experience of interacting with the product, with the goal to gain a better understanding of bottlenecks and opportunities.