Specialization in Health Technology Design

Human-Centred Design and Human-Computer Interaction are key areas in the development of digital products and solutions.

The field of health and well-being is no exception and, in order to enable professionals with skills in these topics, a specialization course in Health Technology Design was created by the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, in cooperation with Fraunhofer Portugal AICOS, Faculty of Engineering, Faculty of Medicine of University of Porto, and UPTEC.

Introduction

The design of technologies for health, totally adapted to end users, is a complex process, while increasingly valued by the medical industry. Understanding the practices, objects, and contexts of people — namely those involved in a clinical process, patient and clinical professional — is essential when developing technologies that will affect their quality of life.

Assessing and/or improving the designed products or services in a clinical context concerning the real world needs and requirements of these stakeholders has the potential to achieve better results on the diagnostic, treatment, and clinical decision. A deep understanding of users and the impact that technology can have in their life and work enables the development of technology that is apt to the necessities and expectations of users in a clinical context. Moreover, it warns of the possible negative financial impact for companies that develop health technology that does not meet the real needs of users and is, ultimately, disregarded.

Course general objectives

> Instruct students with a solid education on the principles of Design for interactive medium and in Human-centred methodologies applied to mHealth and eHealth;

> Understand human factors, their relationships and impact in the organism homeostasis, health, and well-being associated to User Experience: Cognition; Memory; Emotion; Sentiment; Motricity;

> Understand and apply User Research methods in the context of health;

> Instruct students on the fundamentals of principles and requirements of privacy, cybersecurity, and current legislation, and how these affect the development, design, interaction, and integration of technology centred on health technologies’ users;

> Understand the context of serious games applied to health, its mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics;

> Understand and analyse case studies in the clinical context of Human-Computer Interaction;

> Understand and implement prototype methodologies and assessment in the development of clinical technologies.

Learning Outcomes

> Understand the specificities of User Interfaces in different contexts and devices to support human health and well-being;

> Understand human factors and how they articulate with the experience of interacting with artefacts of support to human health and well-being;

> Identify and understand the different methodologies of the project and the team management for interactive media;

> Identify and understand privacy, security, and regulation requirements that are related to the creation and development of user interfaces, and processing personal and health data;

> Understand design and prototyping tools, implementing methods for the definition of system/product requirements, and user-centred design;

> Understand, implement, and access different typologies and phases of prototyping, through the experimentation with rapid prototyping tools for the development of applications and games, including adequate languages and paradigms for programming;

> Understand and to be able to apply interaction and game design principles to interactive media in the context of health and well-being.

Syllabus