When Nurses Meet Vibe-Coding: Shifting from Problem Talk to Situated Specification in Participatory Design
Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2026
Vibe-CodingParticipatory DesignLLMHealthcare
Abstract
Participatory Design (PD) empowers end-users as co-designers, yet contemporary practice often reduces PD to ideation workshops where users contribute ideas but remain excluded from implementation. This gap stems from an asymmetry in technical knowledge—users cannot experience how their ideas translate into working systems, limiting feedback to abstract problem framing. We conducted a 110-minute workshop with five clinical nurses designing an EMR interface, incorporating real-time “vibe coding”—LLM-assisted prototyping that transforms verbal descriptions into functional interfaces within minutes. Through thematic analysis of utterances and post-session surveys, we observed shifts in design articulation: from abstract problem statements toward situated specifications referencing concrete screen elements, conditional triggers, and failure modes. Participants reported enhanced agency, identifying as co-creators rather than passive informants. We contribute a methodological template for integrating vibe coding into PD and preliminary observations suggesting that real-time implementation may help surface tacit domain knowledge and reconnect implementation with genuine participation.