The Patient Experience Driver Toolkit: Centering Patients in the Design of New Care Pathways

Improving patient experience is an increasingly important goal in healthcare. As a result, design professionals are now more involved in developing clinical care pathways. This presents an opportunity to leverage design methodologies to intentionally influence patient experiences. Experience design has emerged as a domain with tools to map complexity, measure experience, and identify innovation opportunities. However, integration of clinical research with design and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) remains limited. To address this, we introduce the Patient Experience Driver (PED) Toolkit—a novel tool supporting designers in incorporating clinical patient experience knowledge into their process. This paper presents the development and application of the PED Toolkit in a healthcare case study of a lifestyle-change care pathway for atrial fibrillation, tested in a clinical trial. We find the PED Toolkit enhances designers’ sensitivity to patient experience, provides structure throughout the design process, and integrates patient-centered considerations into areas where they are often overlooked.