When Practice Meets Play

In pediatric exam rooms across the country, the script is familiar: the child sits on a crinkly paper table and recoils at the sight of the otoscope. What happens next — the negotiation, the distraction, the occasional meltdown — has been accepted as part of the check-up ritual, until Dr. Kaitlin Wiseman, a family practice physician, co-founder, and Chief Medical Officer of Playhouse MD, decided it didn’t have to be.

Dr. Wiseman’s first experiment was low-tech. She attached a playful cover, designed by her sister Sydney Wiseman, to her otoscope and told her young patients she was going to count stars in their ears. The kids sat still. Curious instead of afraid, they cooperated. A small reframe had changed the interaction.

That insight became the founding premise of Playhouse MD — and the brief that Sydney, Kaitlin, and co-founder, COO and CFO Michael Kamins brought to IDEO Play Lab. The question on the table: Could a single proof-of-concept scale into a coherent product line, one that transformed a frustrating routine of pediatric care into something children and parents could approach with confidence?

2 Disciplines, 1 Brief

Playhouse MD CEO Sydney Wiseman came to the partnership with history. Her background in toy design had brought her into IDEO’s orbit and she understood the methodology.

“What made IDEO the perfect partner is something few other firms can really claim: deep expertise in both toy design and healthcare innovation,” says Sydney. ​“We were building something at the intersection of those two worlds, and IDEO was able to pull from real experience in both.”

“When Sydney approached us and shared her vision of making children’s healthcare less scary, it just made sense,” says Michelle Lee, IDEO Partner and Play Lab Managing Director. ​“At the IDEO Play Lab, we understand that play has the power to transform fear into curiosity and resistance into willing engagement. For kids, all you need is a hint of play to spark their imaginations and reframe a difficult situation into one that is more joyful.”

The engagement was structured around a two-part challenge: Design a suite of playful accessories for the clinical setting, and carry that same logic into the home — where medicine gets rebuffed at 2 a.m., thermometers are a non-starter, and a congested toddler won’t be soothed. If Playhouse MD could change those interactions, the same logic could extend throughout pediatric care.

The Work of Understanding

The collaboration began in person. Both teams gathered to map the friction points in pediatric care. Then IDEO Play Lab designers went into pediatric offices, sat with physicians, and ran research sessions with families across the country, collecting video diaries, survey responses, and observational data from real care moments in real homes.

Parents described the struggle of giving medicine to defiant children. Physicians talked about kids hearing the ​“s‑word” — shot — and having an appointment unravel. Families expressed the anxiety that builds from the parking lot before a child ever reaches the exam table. An entire industry had been designing for the adults in the room.

“In field research, there were many moments where you could see a lightbulb turning on in parents’ heads as they tested our early prototypes,” recalls Matt Callahan, IDEO’s project lead. ​“It was so inspiring to see parents get excited about using play to help improve challenging moments in their daily routines, and to see the genuine excitement they felt about using our prototypes to help.”

From that research, the team developed a design framework that would run through every product decision: give children agency in their care when possible; build familiarity with medical tools through playful encounters at home; engage multiple senses; and use narrative to redirect fear.

From 150 Ideas to 9 Prototypes

The brainstorming phase generated more than 150 concepts. Some prototypes had lights and sounds, and the designs that moved forward, a rocket ship medicine dispenser, an elephant-shaped nose aspirator, and a narwhal nasal bulb, mimicked toys and exemplified ​“maximum cuteness.”

Callahan recounts, ​“We used our human-centered, design research process to develop our strongest ideas and narrow in on the concepts that worked best. We worked to evolve our designs based on feedback from home visits, surveys, and video diaries, and this continuous feedback helped guide us to where Playhouse MD could have the strongest impact.”

Each prototype had to earn the trust of physicians, survive parents under stress, hold up to sanitization standards, scale to manufacture, clear FDA review, and withstand imitation. ​“This tension was constant throughout the engagement,” Kamins says, ​“and it made everything better.” Conversations about character design were also about function and materials.

The medicine dispensers, shaped like a rocket ship and a butterfly, concealed a rubber insert and housing engineered to attach securely to any syringe, from any manufacturer, in any size. The tolerances had to hold at both ends; getting there took multiple rounds of prototyping. The finished product conceals that work entirely. ​“Underneath the playful character cover,” says Kaitlin, ​“is a piece of precision engineering that has to work perfectly every single time a parent gives their child medicine.”

18 Months to Market

IDEO Play Lab delivered nine high-fidelity prototypes — durable, easy to disinfect, and stable enough for testing with children. Their quality helped Playhouse MD secure multiple rounds of funding and move from initial brainstorm to first retail launch in 18 months.