Bringing Medical Devices into the Home
Dylan Horvath, Founder and Chief Product Officer at Cortex Design, discusses the challenges of bringing medical devices into the home, emphasizing human-centered design and the need for products to fit seamlessly into a user's lifestyle rather than feeling like foreign clinical objects. He explains how engineers must overcome their own biases and technical complexity to create intuitive interfaces, using concepts like affordances and signifiers to guide user interaction without relying on manuals. Horvath also highlights the critical balance between aesthetic appeal, manufacturability, and regulatory constraints, advocating for early validation of user needs and cross-functional collaboration to mitigate risk and ensure product success.