Design to reduce negative emotions: improving children's experience of the dental office
Date
2007
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Abstract
The goal of this Master's Degree Project is to use an affective design approach to the issue of pediatric dental anxiety by gaining insight into children's emotional experience at the dental office and proposing a holistic design solution. This project illustrates how empathic design approaches can be useful to help identify design opportunities for children who may be experiencing negative emotions such as fear, anxiety and pain. Background literature research focuses on a context analysis of the issues from a pediatric dentistry, psychosocial, emotional and design perspective. Empathic techniques, namely key informant interviews and observation of users within the dental office environment are used as a means of determining the major issues that may affect children's experience at the dental office. The results of this research informed the development of four generative design themes that may improve a child's dental experience: aesthetics, relaxation, distraction, and empowerment. The proposed design solution to reduce children's negative emotions is a digital media system hand-controller that children can use while undergoing procedures in the dental chair, when fear and anxiety are most acute. The controller functions as a means of: relaxing children through aesthetics, distraction and empowerment, with an alarm function to communicate distress. The use scenario for the controller and digital media system is illustrated and contextualized through a final storyboard of what an ideal dental office experience may be like for pediatric patients.
Description
Bibliography: p. 125-132
Contains oversized pages.
Contains oversized pages.
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Citation
Houston, G. (2007). Design to reduce negative emotions: improving children's experience of the dental office (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/2829