Today’s healthcare industry has become increasingly reliant on technology and medical software. While medical software has come a long way in recent years, it can still cause difficulty or confusion for many of its users. In addition, the wide variety of people using the software tools (doctors, nurses, patients, administrative staff, people with disabilities, etc.) makes it even more important for the design of a great user experience (UX, an acronym for user experience) in medical software. In this article, we will discuss tips for building great UX into medical software for the healthcare industry, along with UX research methods that can achieve big results.

Medical Software Accessibility & UI Testing

A wide variety of users can interact with medical software: of different roles (doctors, nurses, patients, etc.), different abilities (visually or hearing impaired), and different demographics (young vs. elderly patients). For each of these types of users, medical software must be able to serve their needs, and allow each of those users to achieve their goals efficiently. As an example, an elderly patient with poor vision should be able to use a mobile application on their phone to check the results of their lab tests. In this case, the UI (user interface) of the application should make use of strong contrast and large fonts so that they can use the software. Some basic accessibility testing would reveal whether this was an issue by testing if a high-contrast mode or larger font size was easily accessible. However, this is just one instance of many. How can those designing medical software for the healthcare industry ensure that their user experience is not only up to par, but a cut above the rest?

Research has shown how good UX impacts overall user satisfaction, boosts success rates (allowing users to complete tasks and achieve their goals efficiently), while avoiding headaches caused by poor design. In critical medical situations, a good, intuitive interface on a medical device can literally save lives.

Medical Software UX: Healthcare Personas

In healthcare, a wide variety of use cases and applications exist for medical software. Some of these include medical records, medical education, mental health, practice management, sports, wellness and nutrition, pharmacy, medical billing, telemedicine, and medical devices among others. For this reason, detailed planning and persona research should be done to determine who exactly will be using the software. Personas can describe typical users of the software in an abstract manner, along with common tasks and goals they might achieve by using the software. This in turn can help guide design and make sure that common tasks are easily achievable, rather than buried in a menu somewhere that’s hard for them to find. Further, personas can guide design by describing users’ goals, tasks, capabilities, fears, and other factors that will help designers empathize with users and support their needs.

Healthcare Applications: Mobile Apps, Software UX

A contextual inquiry can help support the design of users in addition to persona research. Examining users and their behavior, in a typical setting where the software is actually used, will help designers better understand users and design for their needs. Besides the large variety of users already discussed, these users may be using the software from a medical office, an operating room, an ambulance, or from their homes. In addition, they may be using a mobile device, laptop, PC or tablet to access the software. By researching users in their actual environments of use, UX researchers can gauge how well they perform while doing typical tasks (as well as tasks that involve critical safety) to highlight areas of concern that need attention or redesign.

Common Medical Software UX Research

Overall, a wide gamut of software exists in the medical industry, and each type of use case has its own requirements for design. Reaching out to a usability research firm specializing in healthcare is a great way to get feedback on early-stage designs, prototypes, or fully-developed software and gauge its user experience. Following are some common types of UX inquiries done in the healthcare industry for medical software.

1. Contextual Inquiry / Human Interaction Points

As previously described, this type of research examines the use of medical software in its actual environment, in situations where the software is actually used. Situated Research specializes in this type of research, which aims to reduce bias from testing users in a lab or other unnatural environment. Contextual inquiry helps to add context to user behavior and support the design of software tools that are less error prone, easier to use, and intuitive.

2. Task Analysis

A task analysis helps when designing medical software to support the needs of users, such as doctors or patients, by diving into the complex tasks that they wish to accomplish. For instance, carefully watching the process of a doctor trying to take notes during a patient interview can help highlight design flaws, issues, or other significant areas that need design attention or refinement.

3. Focus Groups and Interviews

Focus groups (groups of representative users) and interviews (one-on-one questioning) can help in several ways when designing medical software and gauging its overall fit within healthcare. Early in the design process, these methods can help gather information on what needs are currently not met by existing tools, and specific features might better suit users’ needs. Later on, feedback on a prototype might be gathered during a focus group or set of interviews to better refine a product.

4. Expert Review / Heuristic Evaluation

An expert review can be conducted early or late in the design process, and involves an expert in usability doing a thorough test of the software to find both successes and failures of its design. Both the UX and UI are examined, looking at how easily information can be interpreted by users (UI) and how easily common tasks are completed (UX). Heuristics serve as a guide for the researcher, framing different components of the software to examine. For instance, one heuristic examines error prevention, such as how well users are able to avoid a mistake and recover if errors occur. Other heuristics examine the design consistency of the software, the flexibility of the design for achieving tasks, and whether the system design helps users recover from their mistakes. (Bonus points if a help system exists; more bonus points for intuitive design when users can fix their own mistakes!)

5. Information Architecture

Expert researchers can help design medical software by examining the way the software is structured from an information standpoint: looking at things like menu navigation, screen / page layout, and how difficult it is to locate common things that are used. To do this, things like labeling and organization are examined, as well as whether categories are mutually exclusive. Users should not be confused on what to click in a menu, as in cases where meaning is not properly conveyed by the choices. Methods such as card sorting can help to logically sort out information into categories that make sense.

6. Visual Design (UI) and Branding Audit

As shown in Figure 1, visual design should be carefully examined to ensure meaning is properly inferred by users while minimizing error. This audit can also examine iconography (icons in the software) to be sure that meaning is interpreted by users to the highest degree possible. Everyone has seen icons in software that are confusing, where users have ‘no idea’ what will happen when they click / press on them. These types of visual cues are examined during visual UI testing.

In the above example from UXPA, a sample glucose meter shows how medical devices can be recalled from poor visual design cues. In this case, a user glancing at the screen could incorrectly interpret the glucose reading as 22mmol/L rather than 2.2mmol/L, and think their glucose levels are 10x higher than the actual reading. A poorly emphasized decimal point in the visual design of the medical device caused it to be recalled: a very costly consequence of not thoroughly testing the device.

A range of UX activities exist to help examine the software interface (UI), from a basic visual design audit to interactive prototypes. Some of these include designing wireframes, which are simple, abstract versions of a software interface (highlighting information layout on the page / screen), and color psychology (making use of colors that add meaning by conveying the correct nature of the information).

Color psychology can also be examined during a brand audit, where branding and marketing are examined to see whether the software interface properly utilizes colors, brand language, and typography (fonts and styles) of the corporate branding to ensure good marketing efforts. Both formative and summative research can be done to test designs during development (formative) and following development as a report (summative).

7. Platform Testing and QA

Comprehensive testing of the medical software and its platform should be done before it is released to ensure both quality assurance (QA) and help eliminate problems that may arise down the road. Beyond QA, speed tests should be done to ensure that software and medical devices perform as expected, in the field, or situations where it will be used. For instance, if a mobile app is unresponsive while trying to download data over a slow connection, unintended consequences may occur. These situations should be examined, tested, and accounted for in order to provide a seamless user experience. Cross-platform testing across iOS and Android apps (for mobile applications) and desktops, tablets, or custom medical devices with embedded software should be done as well.

Besides testing, help systems, instruction manuals, customer support systems and instructional graphics should be examined to ensure that users have the support they need when problems arise. As mentioned, bonus points for those software systems that are intelligently designed to detect when users make mistakes and help them correct course, and for systems with intuitive design that help prevent mistakes in the first place.

Summary

As the healthcare industry becomes more reliant on technology and medical software, it becomes more important to incorporate usability research and testing into the design process. With a wide gamut of users (doctors, patients, administrative staff, etc.) and a wide variety of applications (medical records, education, billing, practice management, patient monitoring, etc.) in medical software, it becomes that much more important to craft a design strategy that maximizes its user experience. Whether a patient needs to check their lab diagnostics, or a medical device needs to provide life-saving information, well-designed software can literally save lives.

Research has proven that UX contributes to user satisfaction, successful products, and increased market share. These key metrics are especially important in the healthcare industry, so reach out today to discuss the best research strategy for your product.

Author: Matt Sharritt, Ph.D. (President, Situated Research)

The post Medical Software UX / UI Tips: User Experience Design for the Healthcare Industry appeared first on Situated Research.

In the video, Corning predicted large scale desktop touchscreen displays, bigger video screens, and dynamic billboards. And while much of the video is still in the future, the OLED TV’s shown by LG at this year’s CES do seem to bring the video to life.

Despite the fact that most of what was in the video still hasn’t come to reality, Corning apparently isn’t one to stand still. Just under a year after A Day of Glass was released, Corning released A Day of Glass 2.

The vision is even more heady, with nearly every surface you can see turning out to be an interactive glass screen. Windows, car dashboards, tables. There’s even a large wall in a forest (which is actually a cool concept when you watch the video.) Which parts are reality, which are close, and which are still far, far off?

Corning has an answer for those questions as well. Along with A Day Made of Glass 2, it released a second video (shown above), with a narrator to help explain the technologies and devices. As a tech enthusiast, I personally found it even more interesting than the basic video.

There was one aspect though which wasn’t explained, or even really touched on. During the video conferencing that the Dad was having with another hospital, the second doctor would move in relation to the readouts on the wall, as if he was really standing behind the glass. On a display with today’s technology, he and the readouts would be fixed, because the screen cannot tell where the user’s perspective is.

However, Microsoft is working on that problem. The Verge got a look into Microsoft’s Edison Lab back in December, and posted a lengthy video.

One of the things that Microsoft is working on is a smart wall, which would be able to tell where the user is standing, and change everything to match that person’s perspective.

With the technology that they and others are developing, Corning’s vision might not be as far away as we think. And hopefully a year from now, Corning will show us another glimpse into the future with A Day Made of Glass 3.

Written by: Andy Mercer, TekGoblin; video by Corning (via Presence)
Posted by: Situated Research

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The sight of a surgeon playing “Grand Theft Auto” in the operating room might raise eyebrows, but it’s one example of how consumer technology is being repurposed to advance the practice of medicine.

Rising medical costs — bloated by expensive, complicated machines — are wrecking the nation’s economic health, while off-the-shelf consumer gadgets keep getting cheaper and more powerful. So the health care industry has discovered it can tap into the innovative wonders of an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 or an Android smartphone app.

Dr. Tom Lendvay, assistant professor of urology at the University of Washington, has studied whether warming up on a virtual reality simulator can improve a surgeon’s performance on the operating table, and he now plans to study whether video games could also put a surgeon in the zone.

Lendvay’s simulator mimics the da Vinci surgical robot that many surgeons now use to perform laparoscopic surgery. Warming up reduces errors, Lendvay thinks, by jump-starting the centers of a surgeon’s brain responsible for memory, spatial relations and motor skills — all critical for using the surgical robot.

The problem with simulators is that they’re too expensive to put outside every operating room. An Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 is not. That’s why Lendvay wants to know whether a session of “Mortal Kombat” or some other game is a worthy alternative to warming up on a simulator.

“If you can pay for a video game versus $100,000 for a simulator,” Lendvay said, “that’s all you need to know.”

Another cost-saving adaptation of gaming technology helps Dr. Brian Ross train medical students. Ross is executive director of the Institute for Simulation and Interprofessional Studies (ISIS) at the UW. The institute uses simulation technologies to teach medical skills, as well as to deliver instruction in fields such as business, bioengineering and computer science.

The challenge for Ross and other medical faculty is that the UW is the only medical school in a five-state region — Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana and Idaho. That has made the UW a leader in practicing telemedicine because many students spend much of medical school at hospitals in their home states.

Because the hardware and software necessary to interact electronically with students is expensive, Ross set out to find a cheaper alternative. He found it when he noticed his son sitting in front of his Xbox wearing a headset that enabled him to banter with the other players participating in an online game.

By adding a camera to one console at each end, Ross realized he could turn two Xboxes into a video conferencing system that costs several hundred dollars instead of several thousand dollars for licensing, equipment and tech support. Ross used the system to show a group of students in Boise how to install a breathing tube, and has been using it for other training sessions ever since.

Ross wants to take his Xbox adaptation beyond video conferencing. He hopes to find a game engine developer or two that would be interested in creating virtual medical environments, such as emergency rooms, where students and doctors in different locations could train online through avatars — i.e., digital characters — representing each user.

Kinect’s motion sensors — which enable Xbox users to control the actions of their characters through their own movements and gestures — could turn a virtual emergency room into a “very realistic” learning environment, Ross said.

Launched by Microsoft last year, Kinect is generating as much buzz in the world of medicine as it is among gamers. Search the internet for examples of Kinect being hacked in the name of medical science, and a long list of adaptations appears.

“It’s a really great product where there’s a lot of opportunities to do a lot of things,” says Howard Chizeck, an electrical engineering professor in the UW’s Biorobotics Lab. “It’s a very enabling device. It’s the right thing at the right time.”

A hospital in Toronto, for example, is using Kinect to allow surgeons to make hand gestures to control imaging systems while they operate. This eliminates the need for surgeons to leave the sterile field around the operating table whenever they want to pull up images from an MRI or CT scan. The time they save reduces costly delays.

The UW Biorobotics Laboratory is tinkering with Kinect to solve a different problem. When using surgical robots, surgeons are unable to feel what they’re suturing or cutting. They are guided solely by two-dimensional images on a monitor.

Because surgeons can’t feel what they’re doing, they run a greater risk of damaging surrounding tissue. While it’s possible to put sensors at the tip of a surgical robot’s instruments, Chizeck said, they are expensive and difficult to keep sterile.

Kinect’s motion sensor technology provides a way to create three-dimensional models of patients that can be engineered to provide resistance feedback through the controls that guide the surgical instruments. Fredrik Ryden, a graduate student, is working with Chizeck and another electrical engineering professor, Blake Hannaford, to advance this approach.

Any such system that ultimately makes it to the operating room may or may not integrate Kinect’s technology, but it will be based on research Kinect supported.

“Kinect gives us a really low-cost test bed for developing and testing the idea,” Chizeck said.

Dr. David Loren is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the UW. One of the most important skills he must teach his students is how to interpret and process what they hear on a stethoscope. Before school starts this fall, Loren will have a new tool at his disposal — an electronic stethoscope that uses an Android cellphone app to allow people wearing Bluetooth headsets to listen to the same sounds as the stethoscope’s user.

“Students will hear what I hear at the same time I hear it, and I can talk about it with them in real time,” he said. “It allows me to share not just what I’m hearing, but what I’m thinking.”

The advantages of the new stethoscope extend beyond teaching students. In many cases, more than one doctor is involved in caring for the same patient, but they aren’t in the same location. Now, everyone can listen to the same thing at the same time, which could improve the decision-making process.

“To me,” Loren said, “it’s a quantum leap.”

Written by: Brad Broberg, TechFlash (via Presence)
Posted by: Situated Research

The post How Microsoft’s Xbox 360 & Kinect Help Surgeons in the OR appeared first on Situated Research.