Industrial Design Role in Medical Device Design

 
In the past, medical device design always was performed with medical engineers, technicians and physicians in all design stages and the industrial design role was pale in this field. Today the industrial design responsibilities in designing of these devices are considered increasingly. The industrial design role in medical device design was investigated in two fields. First are aesthetic and its relation with user experience and second are interaction design and its relation with safety. Lack of aesthetical elements in medical devices can cause user to have uncomfortable experiences in sickness periods. Industrial design role becoming stronger by using interaction design trend due to its great influence on increasing the safety and user error decrease, and ignoring this field in medical device design process can cause problem in precise interaction with product. The user error is divided into two major fields: User error from the sight of individual deficiencies and user error from the sight of product design weaknesses. The individual deficiencies are in related with the age, the literacy rate, physical situation and anthropometry and the product design weaknesses are in related with the quality of interaction design in product, the level of used technology in the product, simple gestalt of product, degree of risk, etc. Thus the purpose of this research was investigation of the position of industrial design in medical device design and its authority boundaries. In this research after a brief introduction about the importance of the subject, two definitions about medical devices were described and then specialized responsibilities of industrial design were analyzed, considering the research history. This review was discussed about user experience and user interaction and all related issues were paid in these two key words. The future trends of medical device design were mentioned. there is an explicit trend leads the medical device design to home care medical devices that propels this product to being as much as possible smaller and lighter and being wireless. This trend is shaped due to increase in lifestyle quality especially in elder adults and the increasing need for being cured in their own homes.  according to performed analyze on first section, 10 guidelines were presented for using in medical device design process and considering these guidelines a case study were performed about analyzing the design features of a new designed wrist blood pressure monitor and its comparison in some features with an old blood pressure measuring instrument. As a general conclusion of the paper, due to technical and medical complexities in medical device design and lack of industrial design considerations in design and manufacturing process of these types of products, there are deficiencies of aesthetical elements in most cases which it had bad effects on user experience when heshe is sick. These effects will be more when the user interacting in a bad mood because of hisher illness, in an environment that is full of these bad designed products. Increasing of using industrial design profession in medical device design process can improve the mass dominant sense of being far from clinical environments