Why do children stop wearing their prostheses?
Master's Thesis | User Research
The literature and "common sense" would tell you why children don't wear their prostheses -- It's sweaty and heavy. While that might be true, is there another reason for them to abandon their prostheses?
I conducted user research with children aged 2-15 as part of my Master's thesis at Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. The research was conducted entirely in Dutch.
It turns out that negative peer perception was the main reason why children stopped wearing their prostheses.
User Research
Observation, contextual inquiry, surveys
Some children are born missing an upper arm, while some lose their arm in accidents. At some point in their journey, they would wear a prosthesis. The prosthesis developed by Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has a specially designed socket to alleviate sweatiness. But children are still not wearing them. Why?
I conducted user research with Dutch children as part of my Master's thesis and used a phased approach. I first needed to understand what life is like for these children. For younger children (aged 2-5), I observed them playing and spoke with their parents and physicians. For older children, I interviewed them directly.
"Day 3: My own design. Design your own prosthesis! What would it look like? What sort of functions might it have? What would these functions do?"
Once I had a sense of their lives, I used contextual inquiry to dig deeper. I designed a booklet for children aged 5-15 that would track them every day for a week. The focus was on their emotions while wearing their prosthesis, such as how they felt when they were with people they know vs. those they didn't know well.
"Day 4: People around me. When I wear my prosthesis around my parents and people I don't know, I feel..."
"Day 5: My prosthesis and me. I find the circled part of the prosthesis nice because... I find the circled part of the prosthesis not nice because..."
The booklet came with crayons and stickers. In my research, children responded easier to emotions and so I designed the stickers with both emojis and emotion words like safe, happy, comfortable, boring, itchy, and strange. I also asked the parents to complete a written survey to cross-check the children's answers.
Research RESULTS
My research showed that children quite enjoy wearing their prostheses and would customize it, like put on nail polish. The challenge began around middle school and high school when able-bodied children made fun of those that need a prosthesis. This insight allowed the team to focus their outreach efforts and to design prostheses that are more customizable.