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.
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:
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.
What are 3 methodologies for user-centered design. Are any required by the FDA?
Why are user personas useful, according to the Nielsen Norman Group?
Refer to: Personas Make Users Memorable for Product Team Members
What are the common elements of a persona?
Refer to: Personas Make Users Memorable for Product Team Members
According to Nielsen Norman Group, what are the three types of personas? Write down a pro and con for each.
Refer to: Persona Types, from Nielsen Norman Group.
What are 3 resources you could utilize to gather data for writing a persona.
Practice writing a proto-persona for a project you have worked on using data-driven insights.
TODO: Add example
According to the Nielsen Norman Group what are 3 points where personas fail.
According to Nielsen Norman Group, what is a journey map, and what purpose(s) does it serve?
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:
According to Nielsen Norman Group, what are the key elements of a journey map?
Refer to: Journey Mapping 101
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.
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.
Refer to: User Testing Video by Jakob Nielson, User Centered Design, Reducing Medical Device Risk with Usability Testing, and the FDA’s usability guidelines
What is user-testing? How does it differ from a user interview?
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.
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.
What are the pros and cons of quick findings usability reports vs. formal reports?
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?
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:
What are some of the challenges that arise when there are several stakeholders in the product (product owners, developers, marketers, investors)?
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.
In your opinion, what are your responsibilities as a developer to ensure a client product avoids usability error?
There is no right answer to this, but here are some things to think about:
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