Sensemaking Through Making: Developing Clinical Domain Knowledge by Crafting Synthetic Datasets and Prototyping System Architectures
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
Jul 1, 2025
Abstract
Designers have ample opportunities to impact the healthcare domain. However,
hospitals are often closed ecosystems that pose challenges in engaging clinical
stakeholders, developing domain knowledge, and accessing relevant systems and
data. In this paper, we introduce a making-oriented approach to help designers
understand the intricacies of their target healthcare context. Using Remote
Patient Monitoring (RPM) as a case study, we explore how manually crafting
synthetic datasets based on real-world observations enables designers to learn
about complex data-driven healthcare systems. Our process involves observing
and modeling the real-world RPM context, crafting synthetic datasets, and
iteratively prototyping a simplified RPM system that balances contextual
richness and intentional abstraction. Through this iterative process of
sensemaking through making, designers can still develop context familiarity
when direct access to the actual healthcare system is limited. Our approach
emphasizes the value of hands-on interaction with data structures to support
designers in understanding opaque healthcare systems.
