Designing for Feelings, Not Functions

I recently came across an article about a company called Playhouse MD, a business creating children’s healthcare products. At first glance, the products appear to be playful versions of everyday medical tools. There is a tortoise-shaped nail clipper, a whale-shaped neti pot, an elephant designed to help with nasal suction, and a giraffe thermometer.

Image Souce : PlayhouseMD Website

While the products themselves are charming, what caught my attention wasn’t their appearance. It was the problem they were actually trying to solve.

According to the article, Playhouse MD was founded by two sisters. One is a family doctor, the other a toy designer. On paper, they come from very different worlds, but perhaps that’s exactly why the idea works so well. One understands healthcare and the realities of treating children. The other understands play, imagination, and how children engage with the world around them.

The idea for the company emerged when Dr. Kaitlin Wiseman was working as a family physician and treating children every day.

Like many paediatricians, she noticed that children often weren’t afraid of the treatment itself. They were afraid of the unfamiliar equipment, the environment, and the feeling that things were being done to them.

Her sister, Sydney Wiseman, had created the hugely successful Fingerlings toys. Dr. Kaitlin Wiseman started attaching one of the toys to her medical equipment during appointments. The reaction from children was immediate. Kids became calmer, more engaged, and less fearful.

That simple observation led to an important realisation: children don’t experience healthcare products in the same way adults do. Adults see tools. Children see unfamiliar objects that often appear when they are already feeling vulnerable, uncomfortable, or unwell.

From a functional perspective, there is nothing inherently wrong with a traditional thermometer, nail clipper, or nasal aspirator. These products have existed for years and generally perform their intended purpose perfectly well. However, Playhouse MD recognised that functionality wasn’t the real barrier. The challenge wasn’t whether children could use the products. The challenge was whether they wanted to engage with them in the first place.

This distinction is one that I think many of us in UX encounter regularly. We are often trained to focus on tasks and journeys. We analyse drop-off points, identify friction, improve usability, and streamline processes. These are all important activities, but they can sometimes lead us towards solving the most visible problem rather than the most significant one.

What I find particularly interesting about Playhouse MD is that they appear to have reframed the problem entirely. Rather than asking how to improve the medical device, they asked how to improve the emotional experience surrounding it. The thermometer still takes a temperature. The nail clipper still clips nails. The functionality remains unchanged. What changes is the context in which the child experiences the product.

By introducing familiar characters and playful forms, the products become less clinical and more approachable. A child who might focus on the discomfort of a healthcare task instead focuses on the animal they are interacting with. The product becomes part of a story rather than a procedure.

In many ways, this isn’t really about product design at all. It’s about understanding human psychology and recognising that people rarely interact with products objectively. They interact with them emotionally.

The founders’ backgrounds feel like a perfect example of this. The doctor, she understood the medical need. The toy designer, she understood the emotional need. Individually they may have focused on different parts of the problem, but together they identified something neither discipline could solve alone. The result wasn’t a better thermometer. It was a better experience of having your temperature taken.

This actually made me think about how these experiences can stay with us long after childhood. Even today, I know many adults who are afraid of needles, avoid going to the dentist, or become anxious around certain medical environments. In many cases, the fear isn’t really about the tool itself. It’s about the memories, emotions, and associations that have built up around it over time.

It makes me wonder whether products like those created by Playhouse MD could help shape a different relationship with healthcare from an earlier age. Perhaps not every fear can be prevented, but creating positive experiences during childhood may help prevent some anxieties from becoming deeply ingrained. Amazing work by these ladies, what a beautiful example of two industries working together to solve a user probem.

The broader UX lesson is that not all friction is functional. Sometimes the biggest barriers people face are emotional. Fear, uncertainty, lack of confidence, and anxiety can all prevent people from completing a task even when the journey itself is simple and usable.

We see this frequently in financial services, healthcare, insurance, pensions, and many other industries. People are often less concerned about the mechanics of completing a process and more concerned about the consequences of getting something wrong, or beign afraid of the technology or uncertanty.

This is why understanding people matters just as much as understanding products. A perfectly optimised journey can still create anxiety if it fails to address the emotions people bring with them. Equally, a process that requires exactly the same actions can feel dramatically easier if those emotional barriers are acknowledged and reduced.

That was my biggest takeaway from Playhouse MD. Their products are a reminder that good design isn’t always about improving functionality. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is improve how an experience feels.

Because while people may use products to complete tasks, they remember experiences through the emotions those tasks create, and those emotions can last a lifetime.