Design of a Lower Limb Assisted Training Device for Stroke Patients Using a Multi-Method Integration Approach

Lower limb motor dysfunction caused by stroke severely impacts patients’ quality of life. Existing rehabilitation products tend to prioritize technology over emotional considerations, leading to poor compliance—a critical issue that urgently needs to be addressed in product design. This study explores human-centered design for home-use rehabilitation devices by integrating the Three-Level Theory of Emotional Design (ED), the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and the Needs–Function–Behavior–Structure (NFBS) model. The study employed AHP to quantify user needs and identify core requirements. It utilized the NFBS model and Jaccard similarity clustering to construct a systematic mapping pathway from needs to structure, categorizing 44 structural components into six major modules. Based on this framework, an iterative optimization strategy encompassing functional configuration, structural optimization, and emotional interaction was proposed and implemented through two rounds of design practice. Through two rounds of iterative design, the expert-rated overall satisfaction score increased from 0.883 to 0.928, with satisfaction scores at the instinctive, behavioral, and reflective levels reaching 0.949, 0.931, and 0.892, respectively. The study demonstrates that the proposed ED-AHP-NFBS integrated model effectively bridges the gap between technical rationality and humanistic care, providing an actionable framework for the human-centered design of home rehabilitation devices.