Problem
Physician burnout is a highly ubiquitous problem in the healthcare space...
Physician burnout is a systemic crisis- over half of U.S. physicians report sustained stress, cognitive overload, and workflow friction stemming from administrative burden, fragmented systems, and task switching. This not only degrades provider well-being but also directly impacts the quality of patient care, clinical decision-making, and organizational performance.
Solution Direction
Designing AR/MR for physicians across critical moments
Rather than designing a single interface, we focused on the moments in a physician’s day where cognitive load peaks.
The solution was structured around three high-impact clinical moments, each designed to reduce mental overhead and preserve human focus.
Reducing Cognitive Overhead in Motion
Supports physicians during fast-paced patient care by surfacing only the most relevant information at a glance, minimizing mental recall and interruptions.
Patient Meetings: Preserving Human Connection
Enables doctors to stay present during patient conversations by moving documentation and data review out of the interaction moment.
Pre / Post Procedure: Reducing Error & Mental Load
Reducing error risk and mental load through hands-free, spatially anchored information during high-stakes procedures.
Together, these moments form a system that reduces cognitive load without increasing complexity.
Role
I served as the design lead on this initiative, responsible for shaping the product vision, guiding research, and translating complex clinical workflows into a coherent solution direction.
Key Responsibilities & Ownership
Led end-to-end design strategy across research, concept framing, and experience definition
Facilitated alignment between 3M stakeholders, researchers, and designers
Synthesized clinical insights into actionable design principles and moment-based solutions
Evaluated tradeoffs across safety, feasibility, and cognitive load
Mentored and guided a multidisciplinary team through ambiguity
This work focused on strategic exploration and concept validation rather than production implementation
From insight to direction
Why Spatial Computing emerged as the right solution
Conversations with 12+ clinical SMEs and workflow analysis through five diary studies revealed a consistent pattern across care settings:
Burnout peaks during active care, not before or after
Cognitive strain is driven by context switching, not task volume
Critical information exists, but requires effortful retrieval and interpretation in the moment
These constraints narrowed the solution space away from improving individual tools and toward reducing in-the-moment cognitive and interaction burden.
Spatial computing externalizes information into the clinical environment, reducing the need for memory, navigation, and physical system interaction during critical moments of care.
Design principles
Principles for spatial interaction in healthcare
To ensure the solution reduced complexity rather than introduced new friction, we established a small set of guardrails that guided all design decisions.
Experience mapping & System enablers
Designing spatial workflows supported by real-world constraints
To design a spatial system that could scale across clinical environments, we mapped physician workflows across three high-impact scenarios, rounding, collaborative planning, and surgery, and identified the shared system foundations required to support them.
Mapping these workflows clarified where physicians lose time and focus during care, and guided the creation of a single spatial interaction model that adapts across contexts without adding complexity.
Designing Experiences
Interaction moments across the physician’s day
Through conversations and iterative pressure-testing with clinical SMEs, we validated that the system’s success depended less on individual features and more on how it supported physicians across key moments of care.
The design principles were translated into three core interaction experiences that recur throughout a physician’s day: accessing information under pressure, engaging with patients, and aligning with clinical teams.
These moments shaped the structure of the entire systemensuring interactions remain contextual, minimal, and responsive to clinical intent rather than rigid workflows.
Impact
This conceptual exploration resulted in a validated framework for applying spatial computing to real clinical workflows.
Enabled more intuitive clinical decision-making by externalizing information into spatial context, reducing cognitive effort during active care.
Reduced task switching and decision fatigue by simplifying coordination across patients, teams, and high-stakes environments.
Established a human-centered AR/MR framework for healthcare, grounded in clinical constraints rather than speculative use cases.
Created a strategic foundation for future innovation, paving the way for AI-assisted, spatially aware healthcare systems.
Reflection
This project reinforced that designing for healthcare requires restraint as much as innovation. The most impactful decisions were often about what not to show, when not to intervene, and how to let the environment do the work.
Key learning:
Navigating complexity
Designing across emerging technology and clinical constraints reinforced the importance of structured decision-making and trust-based collaboration.
Balancing direction and adaptability
I learned to alternate between setting a clear design vision and creating space for exploration as the problem evolved.
Designing for uncertainty
Working with AR/MR in healthcare strengthened my ability to translate ambiguity into clear principles and testable systems.
Alignment as leverage
Continuous communication across disciplines proved essential to maintaining momentum and shared intent.