Becoming an Empathetic Design Researcher

Yilin (Eddy) Chen (EDI '25) talks about his unique internship with Northwestern Medicine and the Lurie Children's Hospital.

Yilin (Eddy) Chen (EDI '25) wants to be a user experience designer so he can find ways to improve society.

His recent summer internship for Northwestern's Master of Science in Engineering Design Innovation (EDI) program helped give him that opportunity. 

Chen interned with Northwestern Medicine and the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago. With Northwestern Medicine, Chen helped develop a self-reporting tool for patients with disabilities to document their disability status and accommodation needs for the electronic health record. With Lurie, Chen worked in a research lab focused on utilizing user interviews to identify problems with pediatric devices. 

"In this internship, I had the opportunity to improve the way patients with disabilities receive healthcare," Chen said.

This was not Chen's first time working with Northwestern Medicine. During his first year in EDI, Chen took NUvention Medical, a medical technology development course where students create interdisciplinary teams to solve an unmet medical need. Chen collaborated with students from Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine and Kellogg School of Management during the course and connected with a number of medical device founders and startups.

Leading up to the internship, Chen interviewed multiple Northwestern Medicine staff as part of a larger project to help streamline the process to deliver accessible equipment to patients as part of his EDI service design studio course.

"From working on the service design class project, I learned that there are a lot of gaps between healthcare and design," Chen said. "This internship brought me more insights and exposure to design issues in the healthcare space."

The experience also helped Chen refine his skills as a design researcher. He knew the audience he worked with already faced unique challenges in their daily lives, and he did not want to add any additional burdens. That meant that if he was interacting with a patient with vision loss, he made sure all content created remained accessible to them. 

This was particularly important during focus groups, which Chen routinely conducted.

"They are already going through a lot in their lives," Chen said. "We hope that by participating in our research, their needs are taken care of by us, so they can fully participate and feel comfortable to share their insight with us." 

The experience reinforced one of the most skills he learned to date in EDI.

"I should always actively listen and feel empathy toward the participant during user interviews," he said. "By having good design ethics and empathy, I tried to create a great community and environment for them to share what they felt comfortable sharing."