The Problem
Healthcare systems worldwide are under immense strain due to rising patient numbers, complex cases, and aging populations. These pressures, compounded by staff shortages, increase stress and cognitive demands on medical professionals, threatening their well-being and career longevity. Innovative solutions are urgently needed to maintain care quality and support staff in their roles.
The Result
We created BRIDGE, a friendly and flexible AI framework that supports nurses in their daily work. At the center is MAIA, a calm assistant that explores the emotional side of trust with AI. It lowers the threshold to start using AI by introducing it in a non threatening and supportive way. MAIA helps nurses feel confident and in control while gently guiding them through new tools and routines.
Concept video
Building trust in technology
Spring 2024
Project info
10 weeks
Group project
Umeå Institute of Design
Focus
Reaserch
UX/UI
Mockups
Team
Mai Eigel
Jonathan Wickström
Signe Lindgren
Healthcare systems worldwide are under immense strain due to rising patient numbers, complex cases, and aging populations. These pressures increase stress and cognitive demands on medical professionals, threatening their well-being and career longevity. Innovative solutions are urgently needed to maintain care quality and support staff in their roles.
Partners
Philips
Norrlands Universitetssjukhus
Building Trust for technology
Reducing Cognitive Burden
Strengthening Collaboration and Communication
Empowering Nurses Through Learning
The four core themes from the stories
From our field research, we identified four recurring themes that guided our design focus. These reflected the emotional and practical friction points in adopting AI in healthcare, ranging from alarm fatigue to a fear of losing professional autonomy.
Capturing experiences, ethnographic stories
We began by conducting ethnographic fieldwork at Norrlands universitetssjukhus to immerse ourselves in the real environments and workflows of nurses. By translating observations into personal, emotionally grounded stories, we preserved the human nuance often lost in raw data. These stories became a powerful design tool, making complex realities more relatable and shaping our understanding of trust as it plays out in everyday care.
Field visit
The approch
Our project used a user-centered design approach focused on understanding real experiences through storytelling. By translating nurses' daily challenges into relatable narratives, we identified key needs and values to guide our design. This helped us create a concept grounded in empathy, trust, and practical relevance.
In the end, this project wasn’t just about designing a tool, it was about designing a relationship. Trust is not a feature you can toggle on or off. It’s something that must be nurtured through transparency, consistency, respect, and collaboration. By grounding our framework in the lived experiences of nurses and prioritizing their autonomy, we aimed to show that technology in healthcare doesn’t have to replace human judgment but support it, gently and respectfully. If AI is to become a true partner in care, it must first learn to listen.
Final words
BRIDGE
Using concept presentation to get different levels of trust
During our concept presentation, we discovered different levels of trust based on comments from classmates, Philips, and healthcare workers. These variations surfaced rich insights about trust, highlighting the tensions between convenience, control, and perceived intrusion.
Transparency
Reliability
Consent and control
Collaboration
“Hate when my phone adjust lightning without my consent”
“I would not appreciate AI telling me what to do”
“I am worried about the hiearchy between central station nurse and bedside nurse”
“I dont like surveilance and feeling watched”
“Where is this information comming from?”
Is a conceptual framework for integrating AI in healthcare in a way that builds trust. It focuses on our four key aspects: transparency, reliability, consent and control, and collaboration. The framework is embodied in MAIA, a supportive AI tool that works alongside nurses. Rather than taking over, it reduces cognitive load and reinforces professional autonomy.
Challangeing the setup
By choosing a computer and TV setup that is not standard today, we challenged assumptions about how and where technology belongs. It let us question whether technology should adapt to existing physical and digital setups or if those setups should evolve in response to new ways of working.
Transparency
Maia shows where information comes from and how suggestions are made.
Consent and control
Maia only acts with the nurse’s approval and never overrides decisions. It only exists within its boarders.
Collaboration
Maia encourages teamwork by sharing insights without replacing human input.
Reliability
Maia gives consistent, evidence-based support nurses can depend on.
MAIA trustworthy AI
Grounded in the different levels of trust MAIA is designed to respect its user.
Examples of stories form the hospital
Check real time patient vitals to
support assisting floor nurse
Easily change between patients
Keep track of alarms
Quickly access multiple databases and data
Personalize setup for each patient
Quickly contact available personal