Exploring and Extending Human-Centered Design to Develop AI-Enabled Wellbeing Technology in Healthcare

Digital transformation and digitalisation are rapidly affecting the society. The gradually increasing applications of different types of AI into solutions and services are welcome, but there are associated risks. These include, for example, within human aspects of care undermining fundamental rights, ethical considerations, sustainability, and policies and regulations. This change permeates every societal level, but it is especially evident in the healthcare sector due to the ageing population and shortage of professionals. This situation also places pressure on the development of competencies among healthcare professionals. A human-centered approach in design and design methods can promote the development of AI-based solutions in transdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary processes encompassing numerous stakeholders, scientific orientations, and perspectives. There is a need for research and evaluation of Human-Centered Design (HCD) processes and design methods to develop and gain more insights for future development.

This study was conducted as research through design. It aimed to elucidate the application and insights gained from the adopted Service design process for AI-enabled services and HCD approach while developing AI-empowered solution, Voima-chatbot. One of this research's main conclusions and realization is the shift from purely HCD towards Life-Centered design of AI-enabled solutions with a human-in-the-loop. In addition, this project increased the understanding of the deep importance of having a transdisciplinary dialogue with developers during the process of developing digital well-being devices and combining different professional competencies to achieve the best working solutions.