Specialist dentistery

Together with four other design student from my class, we worked on this project for around five weeks. During this project I was responsible for the contact with the client. In this case I was responsible for the emails and planned online meetings that needed to be setup due to the pandemic.

Client

Specialist Dentistery, Region Halland

Year

May, 2021

Keywords

Co-design

graphic Design

Children teeth care

Background

The special dentistery in region Halland has special resources for people with more complicated needs or due to illness, disability or serious fear of dental care, cannot get dental care elsewhere.Dental care has now realized problems with their way of presenting caries and plaque to children. Currently, printed papers are used to inform the children which is not effective anymore.The special dentistery has tried many different ways to inform children via screen, including PowerPoint slides. But the problem with PowerPoint has been the difficulty to get it adapted to each child and be able to select the right picture for the moment. Specialist dentistry has now realized that children have gained a better knowledge of digital tools over the years and therefore want to keep up with the development.

The challenge

Speciallist dentistry is looking for a modern digital tool that dentists can use to teach about caries and plaque for children over 5 years old. The concept must include how caries are formed and prevented. The current way of viewing printed papers is no longer functional. The special dentistry is looking for a concept similar to storytelling without text where the dentists can show and interact with the children.

view result directly

The process

The first part of the process consisted of a meeting with our client from specialist dentistry. During this meeting, the goals and requirements that the group would then work towards were introduced. This was also an opportunity for us to ask relevant questions before the start-up. After the meeting, a timeline was created that included internal deadlines during the process. During an early stage, an activity list was also designed where the group estimated the duration of each step in the process. This list, together with the timeline, the group could look back and then relate to.

We began the project by building an understanding around the client's profession and familiarized ourselves with relevant terms in specialist dentistry. The majority of the information taken in came from the client and the “1177 Vårdguiden” to which the group was referred. “1177 Vårdguiden” is a web-based gathering place with information and services in health and care where all of Sweden's regions work together. In addition to that, we also had our client as a source of information throughout the design project. Every week we had reconciliation and questions that arose about topics such as caries or questions about the examination process itself. During a few occasions when there was a lack of time, she emailed the answers to our questions.

From our client, we received the information that it is common for children who visit Specialist Dentistry to have Neuropsychiatric disabilities. This means that the children have a different cognition (which, among other things, means that they, for example, think and perceive information differently) and therefore need adaptable teaching aids because it is individual how each works.

‍With this insight, we realized that we needed more depth into how children with different learning processes work. We therefore chose to interview an educator who has worked with children in special schools for 20 years, aged 2.5 to 16 years. We wanted to know how to adapt and think about children with disabilities and what methods are used, as well as why she uses them to teach children who have a different cognition.

Insights from the interview

The interview that was conducted was structured through an interview guide. After the interview with the educator, everyone in the team gathered to evaluate and discuss the answers we had received and could state the following (view image).

It became clear after the interview that the web application needed to be adapted because all children are different, but that it should be clear and structured at the same time. We were also able to establish that strong colours and sounds arouse children's interest and increase the experience and participation.
Including a figure that the child can follow and learn through has also proven to be a good technique through learning for children. In the treatment room at Specialist Dentistry there was a stuffed animal that they use as an aid to demonstrate how to brush the teeth. The stuffed animal has human teeth and a toothbrush for the stuffed animal is available to interact with the child. That gave us the idea to include the figure in some way in our design project.

Sketch phase

When all the information we gathered from the research was compiled, the group began the sketch phase. To get an overall picture of how our system would be structured, we started by sketching a flowchart of how we wanted the pages in the web application to be connected to each other.

After the construction of the flowchart, the group started sketching on paper. This was done individually as we did not want to influence each other's ideas and possibly produce several solutions to the design problem. Then the sketches were presented to each other within the group and it turned out that everyone in the group had similar ideas to each other.

When the group had compiled the low-fidelity sketches, relevant elements were picked out from all of them and based on that, a high-fidelity sketch was created. This happened early in our design process because we wanted to have the opportunity to test these sketches on children between the ages of 5 and 12. The group wanted to do this to get their opinions on the visuals and find out if we had the right thinking about the application. After the feedback we received on the high-fidelity sketches, the first functional prototype was created in the form of a Wireframe.

Evaluation from children

Since the web application would be adapted to children aged five and up, we also wanted to include a part where we tested our high-fidelity sketches together with children. This was done through video calls together with children and was carried out to confirm that the group's insights could be applied to our target group. We created simple questions for the children to answer while looking at the sketches we had produced. These conversations were conducted on four different children between the ages of five and twelve. After the tests, we had an reflection and were able to state that children think differently, both depending on age but also depending on the individual. But our high fidelity sketches were clear and the accompanying dragon figure, which was also an educational stuffed animal in the treatment room, was liked by the majority of the children we tested.

The result

What became the final product is a concept for an interactive digital visual aid in the form of a web application that enables the dentist to inform children about caries in a uniform and adaptable way. We have transformed and upgraded their current way of informing children about caries.

Introducing a mouth

If you press on the mouth you can also view a zoomed picture to get a more detailed view of your teeth. The purpose of this picture is to show children where plaque and caries really takes place.

Healthy tooth

On the bottom of the screen you will find three different stages of teeth health in a chronological order.
This picture shows a healthy tooth, so the respondent has a clear picture of what to strive for.
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Stage 1 caries

This picture shows a stage where the tooth has been affected by plaque. It also shows that the gums have been inflamed.

Stage 2 caries

This picture clearly shows that the plaque has created caries. The purpose of the picture is to clarify for the children’s that this is a bad scenario.

Elements

The children’s also have the possibility to explore more about the tooth itself. The picture displays important elements for your tooth. The purpose is to create a dialog around teeth health between the dentist and the children.

Sugar intake

This clock explains why you shouldn’t snack a lot. This is a tool that dentists can use to show the child how their eating habits affect the formation of caries.

Slider explanation

The choice to include a timeline was to allow the dentist to clearly and easily jump back and forth for a customizable way to teach the child about what the different steps look like.The choice of having a green, then yellow, and finally a red step in the timeline was to mimic a stoplight that clearly indicates green for positive and red for negative.

view figma prototype

Further development

During the course of the project, we realized that time would be a barrier for us in order to produce a complete web application. And because of that, we made boundaries. Sound was one of the aspects that is not unfortunately included. We would have liked to have include sound because it turned out that it is one of the aspects that helps to arouse interest in children. We also believe that if a further development of this project is started, more user tests for the specific target group should be more investigated and carried out. But also that there should be user tests in a real environment to see how this product had worked in practice.

Reflection

Looking back to this problem, it was really educational. Working with children is always difficult, especially the first time in a design related situation. I have learned that you need to be a little bit more careful when you work towards the younger ages. A big problem I identified during this was that the client had predetermined opinions on how the artifact would look like, which is fine. But when it came to the research and the interviews we identified data that reflected against the clients opinions. In this case we prioritised our findings over the clients opinions because the findings from the children were in this case more valueble. But at the same time, our mission as designers is always to put the client in the centrum to achieve satisfaction. We solved this by a close dialog to the client to inform about the situation. In the end we manage to find a balance which made both sides satisfied.

Patience and accuracy are two words that I carry with me from this case.

Albert tholin