Surgical Science | Instrumental

VR/AR + Web Design + UX Design + UX Research

Timeline: 6 Months | Team: Cameron Fahsholtz, Lyle Hamm, Annie Liu, Camryn Rodgers

Introduction

My undergraduate capstone team partnered with Surgical Science to develop Instrumental, a software that allows practicing surgeons to upload their own surgical procedure video to create interactive training modules. These modules are intended to be published on a platform where surgeons-in-training can easily access them from their personal computers.

Surgical Training Problems

Surgeons currently have limited training resources and no proficiency testing before operating on real patients. Hospitals lack cost-effective surgical simulators, and educators need efficient teaching methods with assessments.

How can we design a software that allows surgeons to create interactive surgical training modules to teach and test their students and peers?

Interviews

Conducted semi-structured Zoom interviews with four globally recognized surgeon-educators, analyzed audio transcripts to identify themes and inform design decisions.

Surveys

Gauged interest and expectations on the software idea by collecting responses from 24 surgeons and conducting affinity mapping on responses to discover themes.

Affinity Map

Affinity Map

We can guide surgeons through module creation.


Research Insights

Design Decisions

Surgeons face time constraints when making modules.

Module creation follows a simple and time-efficient linear structure that allows surgeons to complete module creation steps in short time increments and efficiently pass off tasks to supporting staff.

Surgeons are not tech savvy.

 

Step by step instructions for every aspect of module creation and easy and familiar video editing tools inspired by iMovie and Canva.

We can enable easy collaboration on all aspects of module creation, including building assessments. 


Research Insights

Design Decisions

Surgeons want ability to pass off work.

Easy to add collaborators.

Learning progression is important. Teach and assess students on the procedure.

Able to add a variety of assessment types to test students on procedure knowledge and comprehension.

Ultimately, our collaborative design process resulted in a prototype that empowers surgeons.


We sketched frames of our prototype on whiteboards to discuss how our user flows match the interface we envisioned. Sketching these frames before building them in Figma also gave us the opportunity to reassess the interactions we had designed while developing user flows.

Key features of the prototype make it easy and efficient for surgeons to build interactive training modules.

Key Features

key features

Hi-Fidelity Interactive Prototype

Moving Forward

Future Recommendations

Suggested improvements include expanded assessment types, easier captioning, module sharing, error handling, usability testing, and exploring a video editing transitions panel. 


Reflection

Designing in the robotic surgery and healthcare space was extremely complex, especially considering the intricate needs of surgeons as a user group. Their limited time and demanding personalities posed significant challenges. However, I am immensely proud of our team's design decisions. Our success was due to the combination of a wonderful and dedicated team and invaluable support from Surgical Science.

Next Steps

Instrumental was taken to production at Surgical Science.