Requirements and Interaction Patterns for a Novel Interaction Device for Patients in Intensive Care

Intensive care patients that are weaned from mechanical ventilation are facing substantial physical and psychical stress. Due to the breathing tube, they often cannot voice their basic needs adequately. Possible consequences, amongst other complications, are a prolonged healing process and a delirium. To address this issue and support patient communication in intensive care, we provide a solution tailored to patients that are dealing with limited cognitive and physiological abilities, hindering them to use traditional devices efficiently. For this purpose, we develop a novel interaction device tailored to the special situation of in-bed interaction.

In this paper, we present key requirements for the device, which are relevant to the interaction itself as well as possible interaction gestures that may be performed with the device. The basis for this is a human-centered design process consisting of a comprehensive user and context analysis, as well as a requirements analysis. As a result, we identified three categories relevant for the interaction, namely look and feel, sensors, and actuators. The results of the requirement analysis were precise enough to start the actual development process of the device.