It was a great lecture that Dr. Dan Formosa shared his experience in applying biomechanics to product design. I’m very interested in the product: “Cimzia Home Injection Experience” and read the related paper: The effect of a new syringe design on the ability of rheumatoid arthritis patients to inject a biological medication (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000368701100072X) (NYU access only). The paper discusses how they study the preferences of 23 Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients and their injection forces using a conventional syringe and a new ergonomically designed syringe. In the research, both objective measurements and subjective questionare are used to design and test the new syringe.
Without any background of science research, by reading this paper, I got a sense of what is a research and how to research:
- How to select the test objects and analyse the demographic information;
- How to interview subjects in the study sessions, what questions should be asked and in which order, what behaviors and feedback should be observed;
- What aspects should be considered in order to measure the forces, how to process the force data;
- How to analyse the results of questionares and come to results.
With the background of UX design and graphic design, I was always thinking “this is about UX” with surprise and pressure when reading this paper. It broadened my understanding about how to improve the holistic product UX.