MuC 2026 Workshop - Rapid Research in Healthcare – Feasible or Fantasy?

We invite researchers, practitioners, academics, and clinicians from diverse sectors to participate in our workshop on rapid qualitative research methods for healthcare and time-constrained industrial settings. The workshop addresses the growing need to adapt rigorous HCI and UX methods to the realities of busy clinics, where time, regulatory frameworks, and organizational structures often limit what is feasible in practice. The workshop will feature diverse methodological experiments, case studies, or reflections on doing qualitative HCI, UX, or evaluation work under clinical and industrial time constraints, using role-playing and collaborative mapping. We will explore how to design, validate, and justify rapid techniques under real temporal, ethical, and organizational constraints while preserving rigor and reliability. Our goal is to promote conversations and facilitate networking for both experts and newcomers. Selected position papers will be presented as 5-minute lightning talks followed by 5-minute discussions.

09:00 am 

Welcome

09:10 am 

Keynote (20 minutes)

09:30 am 

► Participant presentations highlighting diverse methodological experiments, case studies, or reflections related to doing qualitative HCI, UX, or evaluation work under clinical time constraints. (10 minutes each, max. 120 minutes including a break of 15 minutes).

► Brainstorming Session – Mapping Methods, Pain Points, and Opportunities (60 minutes). Participants in small groups will collaboratively map:

• Qualitative and mixed-method approaches that have been used or considered in healthcare settings.
• Pain points related to time, organizational, and regulatory constraints, recruitment, and analysis.
• Opportunities and promising strategies for making methods more rapid while preserving essential qualities.
• Outputs (e.g. canvases, posters, sticky notes) will be collected to form a joint visual overview of the current landscape.

► Role-Playing – Enacting Rapid Methods in Clinical Scenarios (30 minutes). Groups select two to three rapid methods from the brainstorming session and role-play them in realistic clinical scenarios (e.g. busy clinic morning).

► Role-Playing Presentations – Synthesizing Insights (60 minutes). Each group presents the rapid methods they implemented, challenges they observed, and concrete adaptations or guidelines they propose.

► Discussion – Plenary discussion (90 minutes) synthesizes these insights into themes, tensions, and open questions, drawing connections to existing methodological debates in HCI and healthcare research.

► Wrap-Up and Next Steps (15 minutes). Workshop conclusion will jointly reflect on potential next steps, such as drafting a shared methodological note, setting up a mailing list or special interest group, or planning follow-up collaborations and studies.

Submissions

We invite researchers, academics, UX practitioners, and clinical professionals from diverse backgrounds with experience in the healthcare sector. The workshop welcomes contributions presenting qualitative or mixed-methods HCI/UX case study work in time-constrained clinical and industrial settings; adaptations of research methods; reflections on ethical, organizational, or regulatory challenges with mitigation strategies; proposals for new hybrid “rapid research” techniques that fit clinical workflows; and critical examinations of rapid approaches. We aim to promote conversations and facilitate networking for both experts and newcomers.

Deadline: 30.06.2026

Format: Position paper of 2 to 4 pages following the ACM two-column template using the Overleaf template. 

Topics: Papers should address time-constrained qualitative or mixed-methods HCI/UX work in clinical settings; adaptations of methods; reflections on ethical, organizational, or regulatory challenges with mitigation strategies; proposals for new hybrid “rapid research” techniques that fit clinical workflows; and critical examinations of rapid approaches.

All submissions must include author information

Please submit your position paper through ConfTool.

Submissions will be reviewed by workshop organizers and fellow participants. Accepted submissions will be included in the GI Digital Library.

At least one author of each accepted submission must attend in person and register for at least one day of the conference.

Six selected submissions will be presented as lightning talks (5 minutes each), followed by a discussion (5 minutes each). All other accepted submissions will be presented as posters.

Workshop goals

Rapid research methods: realities and practical constraints. Assess the current realities and constraints in rapid qualitative research methods in HCI with the workshop participants.

Map the landscape of rapid qualitative research in HCI. Identify the landscape of rapid qualitative research in HCI and Healthcare, and collaboratively examine existing rapid methods from HCI, UX, and healthcare research to understand their assumptions, advantages, and limitations within clinical and industrial settings.

Co-create a repertoire of rapid research techniques. Building on shared experiences and existing literature, collaboratively derive, adapt, and specify methods and process patterns that can be realistically deployed in healthcare.

Explore role-playing to test and refine rapid methods. Conduct role-playing exercises in which participants simulate clinical and research roles to identify challenges and opportunities with rapid methods.

Refine before real-world application. Develop a set of practical method descriptions, design considerations, and open questions to inform future work in healthcare HCI and UX.

Preetha Moorthy is a usability engineer and research assistant at the Department of Biomedical Informatics, Medical Faculty Mannheim, Heidelberg University, and a doctoral candidate at the Chair of Human Computer Interaction, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. With a background in HCI, she primarily works on evaluations of healthcare and medical technologies. Her current work translates HCI/UX research approaches into clinical practice, emphasizing usability and UX evaluation of healthcare technologies.

Matthias Reisemann is Chief Executive R&D at Spiegel Institut Mannheim. With expertise in UX design and knowledge transfer, he supports industries in implementing user-centered development processes. His interests center on usage context analysis, requirements management, and human-centered approaches to systems, products, and services, particularly in healthcare. His work shapes development to create fulfilling experiences for all stakeholders while driving sustainable business success.

Vanessa Cobus is Professor of Digitalization and Technology in Nursing (eCare) at Jade University of Applied Sciences, Oldenburg. With a background in human-computer interaction, she primarily works on digitalization in nursing and healthcare technologies. Her research focuses on technological innovations in ambulatory and intensive care.

Claudia Müller-Birn is head of the Human-Centered Computing research group at Freie Universität Berlin and an Associated Researcher at the Einstein Center Digital Future. Her research advances human-centered AI for healthcare, combining computing, interaction design, and participatory methods to embed human-centeredness into AI design. She focuses on relational AI interactions in clinical and care settings through participatory methods, value-centered health data sharing to support informed decision-making, and calibrated human–AI collaboration for healthcare professionals and patients.