User Centered Design: Writing Personas, Journey Mapping, and Conducting User Interviews (WIP)
Purpose
This lesson will cover the foundations of user-centered design as it applies to medical user interface design. User-centered design is the iterative design process focusing on
the end-users experience. This lesson is inspired by usability experts in UX research, and medical device manufacturing. You will learn to apply usability techniques from each area of expertise into your work at Innolitics.
Learning Material
At Innolitics we deploy a variety of user-centered design principles as we ideate, develop, and iterate over our products. These include:
Writing personas Journey mapping Usability testing
Before completing this lesson:
Review this article from Adobe on user-centered design.
Read this article about usability testing for medical devices.
Nielsen Norman Group is a user experience research group that shares their knowledge on research-based design principles. At Innolitics, we refer to this site to guide product design. Use the Nielsen Norman Group website to help you complete this lesson.
To learn as much as possible from these exercises, write your responses before revealing the provided answers. If any exercises seem irrelevant, you can skip them and instead write a justification as to why they are unimportant. These justifications will help us improve the lesson for future students.
Exercise 1
What are 3 methodologies for user-centered design. Are any required by the FDA?
Answer
Writing personas
Journey mapping
Usability tests
Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (uFEMA)
Validation testing (Required by FDA)
Exercise 2
Why are user personas useful, according to the Nielsen Norman Group?
According to Nielsen Norman Group, what is a journey map, and what purpose(s) does it serve?
Answer
Refer to: Customer Journey Mapping
A journey map is a visualization of a product the includes a user goals, actions, thoughts and emotions when using a product.
Some purposes a journey map can serve include:
Shift a company’s perspective from inside-out to outside-in
Break down silos to create one shared, organization-wide vision
Assign ownership of key touch-points to internal departments
Target specific customers
Understand quantitative data
Exercise 9
According to Nielsen Norman Group, what are the key elements of a journey map?
Practice creating a journey map for one project where you think it could provide useful insight. If you worked on this project with a team, explain your journey map to another colleague and note any
incongruities you had about the user journey.
Answer
TODO: Add example
Exercise 11
Based on what you have read, why is user testing important? Give an example of biases you might have as a product developer that would influence
your assumptions of user behavior.
“People ignore design that ignores people” - Frank Chimero
Creates likable products
Unifies teams on product expectations
FDA:
Ensure that device UI does not cause harm or degrade medical treatment
Many use errors cannot be anticipated until device use is simulated and observed
Bressler Group:
It can prevent life-threatening medical device errors
It can prevent product recalls
It can help you get your product to market
Example bias
“I know how to search the words on a web page with (cmd + f), therefore I may assume users would not benefit from a page search feature.”
Exercise 12
What is user-testing? How does it differ from a user interview?
Answer
Usability testing is the popular UX research methodology where a facilitator asks a participant to perform tasks using one or more user interfaces. The goal of this process is to gain insight on the participant’s behavior and listen for feedback about the interface design. Refer to: Usability Testing 101
A usability test is different than a user interview because the test uses specific tasks to gain user insight, whereas an interview asks for user feedback about their overall experience with the product. Refer to: User Interviews
Exercise 13
Read this article from Nielsen Norman Group. Write three tasks you would ask in a usability interview for an internal project at Innolitics, or a relevant competitor. Use this format to construct the tasks:
Example from the MAUDE-Alert usability tests
Goal: Identification of Known Use-Related Problems relating to devices that are similar to the one under development.
Task: Identify known use related problems that have occurred to devices that are similar to a Suture Kit.
Consequence: Users may produce a product malfunctions that could be prevented.
Exercise 14
Refer to the Nielsen Norman Group for resources on how to conduct usability tests:
Conduct a 15-30 minute usability test with a colleague.
The articles below are resources that have helped us conduct usability testing in the past. We recommend reading them before conducting your interview.
Read this article about interpreting usability tests. Write a quick findings report for your usability test.
Answer
TODO: Add example
Exercise 16
What are the pros and cons of quick findings usability reports vs. formal reports?
Answer
Quick findings:
Pro: Fast to write
Pro: More likely to be read
Con: Do not withstand time
Formal reports:
Pro: Archival
Pro: Give more accurate results
Con: Take lots of time
Con: Can be burdensome to review
Exercise 17
If you were told to build a new internal web app or open-source project (e.g. DICOM Standard Browser, MAUDE-Alert, etc.), and you had 1 week to present the first iteration of the design what methods of user-centered deign would you use and why?
Answer
Building a successful project from scratch requires user research. Determining the appropriate research methodologies is influenced by the time, resources, and purpose of the product.
Because the product at hand needs to be designed in 1 week, it is important to consider brief user research methods that will provide actionable insight into your design. Some methodologies you might consider are:
Write 2-5 proto-personas
Conduct a brief competitor analysis
Sketch a journey map, and use the visualized experience as the baseline for the design
Exercise 18
What are some of the challenges that arise when there are several stakeholders in the product (product owners, developers, marketers, investors)?
Answer
Clients with a naive background in software development may not believe in the effectiveness of user research
Clients may not have the time to conduct user research
When designing user interfaces for medical devices, can you think of any risk factors that come with poor usability? Write two
risk factors and give an example of how each could be mitigated.
Answer
TODO
Exercise 20
In your opinion, what are your responsibilities as a developer to ensure a client product avoids usability error?
Answer
There is no right answer to this, but here are some things to think about:
Our website states we know: “Medical user interface design, human-factors engineering, and IEC62366-1”. Does this imply we have a duty to inform clients of usability risk factors in their product?
Noting that poor usability research can lead to maladaptive changes in design, what level of competence is required to ethically provide usability consulting?
If investors disagree with our usability recommendations, who should we prioritize? The users or the investor?
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